Migrant Help seeks prisoners’ feedback in an attempt to improve services

Migrant Help (MH) is launching a survey aiming to assess how beneficial its services are to foreign prisoners.

MH is an organisation, based in Dover, which provides assistance and support to asylum seekers, refugees and migrants in the UK. It has been working with HMP Canterbury, which is a prison exclusively for foreign nationals, for several years but so far there has not been enough feedback from the inmates.

“We are providing legal advising service in Canterbury Prison, so the aim of the survey is to find out what is the benefit of the whole project,” said Desislava Vazharska, volunteer and surveyor for MH.

Inmates have the right to request interviews with prison officials in relation to different issues they might have. For example, they might need representation by the UK Border Agency (UKBA) or they might want to discuss their chance to stay in the country and get a job after their release. Some of the prisoners need arrangements to go back home.

“The main thing we want to find out is why some of the prisoners are not turning up to their interviews. Why would they put the effort of arranging an appointment and in the end not show up for it. It seems pretty pointless to me,” added Miss Vazharska.

The survey is going to be conducted in two waves. During the first one Miss Vazharska and her colleagues will be seeking feedback form prisoners who went to their interviews in order to find out if they have received the help and support they expected.

The second part of the survey will focus on the prisoners who did not turn up to their appointments.

Miss Vazharska said: “We will be interested to know if they [prisoners] had a personal issue or they thought the service is not going to help them or perhaps there was another problem they faced on that precise day and time.”

As many of the inmates do not speak English very well the surveyors will use prisoners with better language skills as interpreters.  This is a common practice with foreign nationals as inmates trust each other and know each other’s cases.

You can watch the full interview with Desislava Vazharska here: