AN INNER city GP practice has come up with a new mental health scheme to helping improve the lives of refugee and asylum children.

Bevan Healthcare has developed a programme called Sharing Stories, Building Hope to help children who have fled from from war-torn countries to make friends as they settle in the city do well at school and sleep well too.

According to Bevan's managing director Gina Rowlands, the scheme has already seen children involved in the scheme grow in confidence, smile more and be happy at school.

The project has been giving one-to-one counselling, group psychotherapy sessions and special antenatal courses for mums-to-be.

“This has been a remarkable piece of work and has been a really humbling and uplifting experience for us,” said Ms Rowlands. It has showed us that with these children it does not require a huge amount of bureaucracy – this is the barrier which will stop the children accessing services. It needs to be fluid and responsive to their needs and they must know that it is safe.”

Bradford City Clinical Commissioning Group’s (CCG) governing body will be hearing all about the positive effects when it meets on Wednesday.

Many of the children getting help have come to Bradford after witnessing war crimes, being victims of war crimes and staying in refugee camps.

In the last three years, Bevan Healthcare has taken on 650 refugees as new patients from the Home Office's Vulnerable Person’s Relocation Scheme (VPRS) and its Gateway Protection Programme (GPP).

In March, Bevan also registered its first patients from the Government's the vulnerable children resettlement scheme.

Dr Akram Khan, clinical chairman of Bradford City CCG, said: “The practice has had a truly life-changing effect on some of the most vulnerable and traumatised children in the world; it reminds us all of what the NHS is about and the positive impact it can have.”

Some of the problems the scheme has been helping youngsters with is them being too frightened to go to school, flashbacks, sleeping problems, nightmares, loneliness and problems interacting with others.

The scheme also set up antenatal courses in response to high 'did not attend' rates for such classes by expectant asylum seeker and refugee mums.

Bevan Healthcare is a social enterprise GP practice providing health and social care to homeless people, asylum seekers and refugees, across the Bradford district

It provides a full range of GP services to its patients and works with partner organisations to offer a wider holistic service which supports people to find stable accommodation, training and employment and move onto mainstream healthcare.