Kevin Rowan

May 30 2006 By Kevin Rowan, The Journal

Last week was Adult Learners Week and Thursday was National Learning at Work Day. To celebrate the latter, I abandoned the office and spent the day at the Asylum Seeker Unit (ASU) in Your Homes Newcastle.

The idea being that I would learn from spending some time in the real world as opposed to the oxygen-free environment of politicians and bureaucrats I usually occupy. And it worked, I did learn a few things.

Firstly, I learned that the way we care for vulnerable people is something we can, as a society as well as individuals, be measured against.

There is much talk about improving the human condition, that wellbeing should be our goal, but this means different things to different people, it is essentially a function of need.

For many of the people I met on Thursday, wellbeing meant simply being protected from the horrors of their recent experience, being treated with some respect and allowed to live a dignified life in safety. I was incredibly impressed with the commitment and dedication the workers of the ASU applied to their jobs. They were universally welcomed and appreciated by the people they are helping, and the care that they gave to the individuals and families they support was not only very warm, it was also easily identifiable as the critical element in making this kind of service work properly.

It is obvious that this kind of service was absolutely dependent upon people. The complexity of services, from receiving asylum seekers into the UK, finding them a place to stay, fixing them into the community, and then supporting them to move on if their asylum application is successful, is immense, involving a range of agencies, all with the potential for problems. This is a demanding role in which the frustrations flare up on a daily basis.

Managing this process supporting individuals who are anxious, confused and in such an unfamiliar environment takes a level of patience and determination, and the kind of people skills that we ordinary humans can only aspire to.

If the public were more aware about the very basic support we give people from around the world who are fleeing some of the worst violence and instability, I think it would make us proud and not critical at all of supporting asylum seekers and refugees.

Kevin Rowan is regional secretary of the Northern TUC