A CHARITY set up 20 years ago to offer help and advice to residents in one of Scotland's most diverse communities is seeking a new home after seeing a massive increase in the number of people seeking its support.
The Well, which is based in Govanhill, Glasgow, was initially set up as a trial project by the Church of Scotland in 1994 and became an independent charity three years ago. Volunteers help members of the community, particularly people from Pakistan, with benefits problems, job searches and personal issues.
It dealt with around 850 inquiries in it first year but has grown 10-fold in the past two decades, with a total of 1209 people making 8018 inquiries in 2013 - a rise of more than one-quarter (27%) from the previous year.
Rhoda Gilfillan, manager of The Well, said one-third of queries were relating to benefit problems and the number of people asking for help had increased significantly in the wake of welfare cuts.
She said: "We are seeing a lot of people under a lot of pressure because of the system. People are being sanctioned or threatened with sanction. There are people with serious mental health issues getting worse because they cannot meet the criteria. It is not that they are not trying but everything is stacked against them.
"We are seeing increasing numbers coming for job searches. People go and sign on and they are given no help whatsoever. They have to be registered online and have to do job searches online. It is an incredible challenge when they don't speak English.
The charity is concerned the premises in Albert Road are no longer fit for purpose, particularly because of a lack of private space.
It is searching for new premises and hopes to move by summer, although the search has been "challenging" so far, with nothing suitable in the Govanhill area. It is also keen to use the move to expand services, with ideas including cooking classes, parenting sessions and outdoor activities.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article