Family Support

Last year: 3628 individuals were supported through 67 family support projects.

Our projects ranged from direct family support, parenting, advocacy, counselling, nutrition and wellbeing, physical activity to family holiday provision. General family support (parenting, relationships, return to work) was requested by 48.5% of our adults, with hardship support and debt advice the next biggest issue at 39.5%.

Our Hubs responded to the needs of their communities by creating safe places for families to seek support. These ranged from open houses for socialisation, food support, signposting and advice, to the Oasis Living Room Projects.

Oasis Living Room Projects

As the cost-of-living crisis grew worse, in Autumn 2022, many of our Hubs started responding to this by providing national Living Rooms for families to have a warm safe space to go, where hot drinks were provided and in many cases, a warm meal.

We’re really pleased that people have come along each week, and we’re proud of the way we’ve been able to use their feedback to make changes and improvements to how we run, and how we communicate with people about how to use the space. Running the Living Room has enabled us to build stronger relationships with some of our pantry members who come, and it’s also provided new volunteering opportunities to those in the local community. 

(Oasis Hub Bath)

Advice and guidance

In 2022 we ran 8 projects covering financial and debt advice, housing support, welfare benefits advice and immigration advice. These supported 119 people. We also ran 9 Hardship support projects supporting 334 individuals.

Spotlight on…Oasis Hub Waterloo

At Oasis Hub Waterloo we provide holistic, person-centred, debt, benefits, immigration and housing advice to local people. We provide a mixture of casework and one-off advice including advocating on a client’s behalf such as writing to an MP about poor housing conditions, supporting with applications and appeals for benefits, creating debt repayment plans or other debt solutions such as Debt Relief Orders. The impact for our clients is tangible, we have secured tens of thousands of pounds in unclaimed benefits through applications and appeals, helped people to go debt free, supported access to housing and other services. All reducing anxiety and increasing confidence in financial management.

I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders, I can’t thank you enough!

Client

Community Events

We were pleased to see our community event attendance return to pre-covid levels. Oasis Hubs planned and delivered 82 events with almost 14,000 people in attendance.

Spotlight on…Oasis Hub Hull

707 people accessed the Rainbow Trail at Oasis Hub Hull between the 4th to 12th August 2022 which aimed to create space for families to have fun, enjoy themselves, explore family make-up and reflect on how we are all created differently and equally, and all loved by God. The Rainbow Trail was promoted at Hull Pride, in the parade with a banner saying ‘You are beautifully and wonderfully made’.

The Rainbow Trail took place in Oasis Hull’s ‘World of Wonder’ Church space. As people arrived, they were given a trail card with the aim to find all the family display boards within the trail, find the clue in each one, which spelt out the phrase ‘Love Is Love’. An artist was commissioned to create the boards which included a picture and some information about each family.

We loved the rainbow trail today. We're a 'bigger than average' family where some of the kids are adopted and some are biological, where some of us were born in the UK and some were born abroad, where some of us are neurodiverse and some are neurotypical. I think events like yours help normalise our differences and create an inclusive culture.