SPECIFIC CASES
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THE ORIGINAL HAS BEEN CLOSED FOR
84 YEARS UNDER FOI EXEMPTION No... 40
Ockenden already has a number of cases on its books, which represent requests for assistance from local health authorities for refugees suffering from stress and depression and withdrawal. To the majority of requests
it has, so far, been difficult to give a positive response.
(1)
(2)
Currently we have requests for similar assistance from Somerset, Worcestershire, Cleveland, Hampshire and Northamptonshire.
FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS
Local authorities are reluctant to provide funds for facilities outside their own areas. Northumberland has proved the exception in the case of Su A Duong but Ockenden cannot, from its own resources, provide adequate care and support facilities. for the numbers involved. Special arrangements for funding at national level are required if this problem is to be tackled realistically. This funding should include resource for research into the extent of the problem and for training of specialist personnel to meet it.
URGENCY
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The problem is immediate and urgent: there have already been some suicides. Stress increases as hope dies. Britain is not facing this need in isolation it has appeared wherever Vietnamese have been received in the West. The contact group set up to follow through with recommendations of the 1983 Seminar on the Integration of Refugees in Europe has requested that the UNHCR Division of Assistance should undertake a survey of existing mental health services in European countries specifically equipped to heal refugees, identify areas of need and collect information on the availability of quali- fied refugee health workers. There has been no evidence of any rapid follow up to this matter. In the USA the incidence of refugee trauma and mental background has been identified as a rapidly increasing problem. For instance, in the Oakland District of San Francisco where about 17,000 refugees live, (the total number received in the UK) the Asian community Mental Health Centre has about 130 refugee walk-in cases a month.
In this country we have, so far, not tackled this problem realistically and little has been done, beyond Ockenden's own comparatively small contri- bution to improve the situation since my paper 'The Stress of the Vietnamese Boat People' was presented to the Joint Committee for Refugees from Vietnam in June 1982.
12 July 1984
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Joyce Pearce
The Ockenden Venture Guildford Road Woking
Surrey GU22 7UU
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