VoRTCS - Volunteer Refugee Tutoring & Community Support Program

Refer a Family

Thank you for contacting us about assisting a refugee family. VoRTCS is happy to accept referrals of refugee families from any other organisations or individuals. Please download the Family Referral Form while you read.

How does VoRTCS help refugee families?

As a quick overview, we send pairs of volunteer tutors out to the homes of refugee families who have recently arrived in Australia. We try to match tutors with families who live in the same area as they do.

The tutors help their assigned family with whatever tutoring support is needed and assist them to become self sufficient in our community over several years. Often, this involves helping the whole family with their English, the adults with their understanding of how different community services work, and the children (usually several children per family) with homework and reading/writing skills, and also helping the parents with conversation skills where needed.

The tutors visit the same family once each week, negotiating the day and time of the visit with the family, and generally stay for around 1-2 hours. Tutors continue to visit the families over several years, ideally until they have become self sufficient and no longer need assistance.

We don't require tutors to have previous teaching experience, and we provide training, resources and ongoing support for all our volunteers. However, we do have some trained teachers, ESL teachers and social workers who volunteer for us as tutors, so where a family would benefit from trained assistance, you can indicate this on the referral form.

All our tutors are required to hold valid blue cards and undergo training before they start tutoring. All contact with the family must be done in pairs and authorised by the VoRTCS Committee.

What families can VoRTCS help?

Our services are strictly for refugee families as opposed to migrants.

VoRTCS tutors work with the entire household. If only one member of the household wants tutoring support then it is more difficult to place tutors with the family, as the tutors are unable to visit a house alone for insurance reasons.

How do I refer a refugee family to VoRTCS?

If you would like to refer a family or individual to us for tutoring, you will need to complete the VoRTCS referral form and email it to us at tutoring@refugeetutoring.org Please complete only one form for each household that wants assistance, and provide as much information as possible about the relevant matters. We will need the names and ages of every member of the household, as we need to provide this information to the tutors.

We ask the person referring the family to us to go along and introduce the tutors to the family on their first visit. This may only take 15 minutes or so, and ensures that the tutors and family are comfortable with the situation. We usually pass your contact details on to the tutors to allow this to happen, so please let us know if there are any problems with this occurring. If someone else in your organisation knows the family better and would be the better choice to introduce the tutors to the family, please put their details down on the form also. We will then notify both of you once tutors have been found.

If you have ongoing contact with the family, the tutors may also like to contact you regarding their family throughout the tutoring. We encourage this wherever possible, but understand that you have other work and personal commitments and will be careful not to unduly impose on these.

Please contact us at tutoring@refugeetutoring.org if you have any questions. You can download our referral form, and complete it by hand if you prefer. Please post it to us at:

VoRTCS
c/- St Vincent de Paul Society
PO Box 3351
South Brisbane 4101

Please note that it is easier for us if you can complete the form online!

We endeavour to find tutors for a family as soon as possible. However, please understand that there is a significant waiting list and it is likely to take several month to place the family depending on tutor availability and family location. The wait for tutors to obtain blue cards also takes some time. In areas with high demand, the wait can be as long as a year. Please also note that there may be situations where we are unable to place tutors with a particular family, for a variety of reasons.

You will receive an email acknowledging receipt of the referral, and we will be in touch with you once tutors are located to ask you to introduce the tutors to the family. If you have any questions about the tutor matching process, please don’t hesitate to contact us at this address.

Thank you for helping VoRTCS to help a refugee family!

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