Would you take a refugee into your home? Lise Thorne, and her family have been doing that for the past seven years – welcoming single mothers and their children into their East Sheen home. Now she is setting up the Welcome Home Project, to offer emergency accommodation to those in desperate need who are faced with nowhere to go
It was in 2015 when Lise Thorne watched as the drowned body of Alan Kurdi, a two-year-old Kurdish refugee, was gently picked up off the beach on the Turkish coast. She vowed she would do something to help. Since then she has homed seven single mothers and their children, offering them rooms in her house, alongside her own three children, for as long as they need – usually six months, but recently for two years.
An astonishing 131,370 children in the UK live in emergency accommodation, says Lise, ‘a lot of which is often horrifically unsuitable. Responsibility rests with local councils to house single mothers with no recourse to public funds. They are in fire-fighting mode and don’t own suitable accommodation.’
Because of this families are often placed in hotels at great expense – up to £110 per night. This means they don’t have access to laundry and cooking facilities. They have to rely on instant food or expensive take-aways which they can ill-afford. They are often moved, so that children who leave one hotel in the morning to go to school may be living somewhere else by the time they finish school, with no idea that’s the case. ‘Families often have to vacate a room by 10am and wait with their worldly belongings until 3pm or later to find out where they will sleep that night,’ says Lise. Worse, they will separate mothers from children if they can’t find suitable accommodation for that night. And there is only one B&B in the whole of Richmond that will accept refugees.
So, she is setting up the Welcome Home Project – a B&B that that will accommodate four single mothers and their children. Getting finance to buy the home in Twickenham, the rooms will be ensuite, to give each family privacy, and will be well furnished and stocked with the things you would find in a normal home, so that families can cook for themselves and do their washing. A place of security and stability for their children. The families will stay there as long as they need before being found permanent accommodation.
But despite there being only one other B&B in Richmond, Richmond Council is keen for Lise to rent them the house as a single accommodation. The rent for this wouldn’t even cover her costs, but as a refuge for single mothers this would cost them less than the £110 they pay per night for hotels and cover her costs. Lise has hit a brick wall with them and no one seems to be listening.
Lise believes the Welcome Home Project B&B would help so many more people than a single house: ‘There will be cooking and laundry facilities, storage, wi-fi, printing facilities, and it will be managed by people who understand and care. The project manager of the house herself arrived in the UK seeking asylum and understands the harsh realities of life at the margins. She will help create a pathway to a stable life for each guest, including schooling, immigration advice and signposting to charities. Volunteers will help read with children and provide much needed childcare. The Welcome Home Community means whether people stay for one night or six months, they will be able to access that support.
‘Cutting corners with vulnerable people in temporary accommodation builds vast costs for society, and the economy, for decades to come. Children are traumatised by their experiences and are then unable to flourish in the future, trapping them and even their children in patterns of dependency and neglect.
‘For the price of a room at a local hotel there is an opportunity to provide much for these families, and the hope is that Richmond council will be persuaded that using the service will truly make a difference to people’s lives when they most need it.’
For more information email: lisethorne@gmail.com
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