Barnardo’s Boloh Helpline is pleased to announce the expansion of our service to support the mental health and wellbeing of adult asylum seekers across the UK. This project is funded by the Home Office from September 2022 until 31st January 2025.
The Helpline will offer advice, signposting, emotional support and 8 free sessions of therapy by qualified Barnardo’s therapists. These sessions can take place remotely via telephone or online. Barnardo’s has a long history of providing mental health support to children, young people and adults and has a large pool of culturally informed therapists who speak a range of languages. Sessions can take place in your own language at a time that works for you.
Helpline Advisors can also offer practical support such as food vouchers and access to digital devices. We are continuing our partnership with Vodafone to ensure that asylum seekers can access support by providing digital devices.
You will be allocated a dedicated Advisor who will work with you over a series of calls to ensure that you have someone to talk to, and access to all the support that you need.
Calls are confidential and we will not share personal information with the Home Office.
The Boloh helpline team are not able to; make changes to your accommodation, support with age disputes, offer legal support, give financial support or provide updates / make changes to your Asylum claim. If you don’t know who to contact for these issues, our team are happy to advise, and you are able to access our resource list here.
We welcome referrals from professionals via our referral form, as well as direct contact from asylum seekers by telephone, email or online chat.
The Helpline is open Monday – Friday (10am-8pm) and Saturday (10-3pm) via phone 0800 151 2605, webchat and email Boloh.helpline@barnardos.org.uk.
Since 2022 we have supported over 1300 service user with therapeutic support. Unfortunately, due to such high demand we are not able to accept referrals for therapeutic support at this time. We are working closely with commissioners to secure additional funding for 2025 so that we can continue to offer this much needed support. During this period our advisors continue to offer support, which includes signposting and advice as well as practical and emotional support. Our advisors can arrange follow up support calls if this would be of benefit to service users. We hope to be able to announce additional funding soon. To access this support you can contact us via phone, webchat or email.
Find out more about our therapy service in our animation below
Therapy Support Service - English (with subtitles)
Therapy Support Service - Farsi خدمات پشتیبانی درمانی - فارسی
Therapy Support Service - Vietnamese Dịch vụ hỗ trợ trị liệu - Tiếng Việt
Therapy Support Service - Somali Adeegga Taageerada Therapy - Soomaali
Therapy Support service - Amharic ቴራፒ ድጋፍ አገልግሎት - አማርኛ
