Birmingham Community Hosting Network
Charity 1151763
Overview
Summary
Birmingham Community Hosting Network, operating on its website as BIRCH Network, appears to be a volunteer-led sanctuary organisation whose distinctive role is to turn local hospitality into sustained relational support for people navigating asylum and refugee systems. Its current model seems broader than accommodation: it combines family-based connection, youth support, hotel outreach, advocacy and referral relationships. A significant current tension is that the hosting service reflected in its name and charitable framing is closed pending review, potentially making its relational and advocacy work more central to its present role.
Operational geography
Evidence and reasoning
Supporting evidence
Sparkhill
Confidence: medium
The latest available trustees’ report identifies a venue in Sparkhill as the location used for the weekly youth hub from January 2025. The current website confirms that the youth hub remains an active service, but does not restate its venue.
- BIRCH Network Trustees’ Annual Report, April 2024–March 2025
The report states that the organisation had used a venue in Sparkhill for its youth hub since January 2025, delivering 29 youth-hub sessions during the year. - BIRCH Network website, About us
The current website states that BIRCH runs a weekly youth hub, supported by volunteers, for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and young refugees.
City Centre
Confidence: medium
The 2024–25 annual report records substantial delivery within a city-centre asylum hotel, including 37 community hubs. This is direct evidence of activity during that reporting year, although the current website does not identify the hotel or confirm that this particular venue remains in use.
- BIRCH Network Trustees’ Annual Report, April 2024–March 2025
The report states that its family-support project worked with families, single women and couples living in a city-centre asylum hotel, and delivered 37 community hubs there.
Remaining uncertainties
- BIRCH’s current website directly describes outreach to initial-accommodation hotels across Birmingham, supporting a citywide operational footprint, but it does not name individual hotels or the wards in which they are located. Individual hotels and their locations should not be identified.
- The reported youth-hub venue is evidenced for 2024–25. The organisation’s current website confirms the youth hub continues but does not confirm whether delivery remains at that venue.
- The registered contact address is not established by the available evidence as a public-facing or service-delivery site, so it has not been recorded as an operational area.
- The Charity Commission records operations across Birmingham City and other West Midlands local-authority areas, while the current website’s detailed service description is focused on Birmingham. The evidence is sufficient for a citywide Birmingham classification but insufficient to map current activity outside Birmingham.
- The annual report identifies St John’s Sparkhill as a material venue partner and lists referrals to more than 30 agencies, including Refugee Action, Refugee and Migrant Centre, St Chad’s Sanctuary, Restore and Birmingham Children’s Trust. These partnerships extend support and referral pathways, but the available evidence does not show a distinct Birmingham geographic footprint for each partnership.
Additional evidence needed
- Current confirmation from BIRCH of the broad Birmingham area served by its weekly youth hub, in a safeguarding-appropriate form.
- A current, safeguarding-appropriate summary of the Birmingham areas in which outreach hubs are operating, without identifying individual beneficiaries or sensitive accommodation sites.
- Confirmation of whether the registered contact address is solely a correspondence and administrative address or is used for any service delivery.
- Current information on which partner venues and referral organisations are actively used, and whether any provide regular delivery locations.
Areas of work
- Accommodation/housing
- General Charitable Purposes
- Human Rights/religious Or Racial Harmony/equality Or Diversity
- The Prevention Or Relief Of Poverty
Who they help
- Other Defined Groups
How they help
- Provides Services
Discoveries involving this organisation
The Atlas has not published any Discoveries involving this organisation yet.
Observations
Hospitality is used as a form of social infrastructure
The organisation appears to treat hospitality not simply as emergency help, but as a way of creating belonging, safety and trusted relationships for people who may be socially isolated.
Why it matters
This distinguishes the organisation from a conventional accommodation provider. Its potential value lies in connecting people to ordinary family and community life, which may complement formal asylum, housing and welfare services.
Show evidence
“The charity harnesses local people to offer friendship and hospitality to people seeking sanctuary.”
Source:Organisation“Young refugees are matched with trained volunteer families who meet them weekly or fortnightly in the family home.”
Source:Organisation
Its named service is currently uncertain
The closure and review of the hosting network may indicate a strategic or operational transition away from short-term home hosting, despite that model remaining central to the organisation's name and historic description.
Why it matters
Understanding this distinction prevents readers from assuming that accommodation is currently available and raises a useful question about the organisation's future capacity and identity.
Show evidence
“The hosting network is currently closed while the charity reviews whether it can continue offering hosting.”
Source:Organisation“The charity's activities include short term accommodation for destitute asylum seekers in volunteers' homes.”
Source:Charity Commission
The organisation operates across direct support and system change
BIRCH appears to combine frontline support with evidence-gathering, policy participation and cross-referral, suggesting it sees individual hardship as connected to wider features of the asylum system.
Why it matters
This may make the organisation a bridge between lived experience, local migrant-support networks and advocacy aimed at institutional change.
Show evidence
“The charity engages with migrant organisations and networks to cross refer and support beneficiaries holistically.”
Source:Organisation“The charity participates in research, policy and lobbying work concerning the immigration and asylum system.”
Source:Organisation
- Whether home hosting will reopen, and what prompted its review.
- The scale, reach and outcomes of the youth hub, family befriending and hotel outreach work.
- How the organisation's use of BIRCH Network relates to its registered name.
Remaining uncertainties
- Recent annual reports or service data showing beneficiary numbers, volunteer capacity and current programmes.
- Evidence on referral partners, participant experience and outcomes from family befriending and hotel outreach.
Additional evidence needed
Charity Commission profile
Activities
Providing support through community hospitality to vulnerable asylum seekers in the West Midlands, including: - Hosting Network: short term accommodation for destitute asylum seekers in the homes of volunteers - Family Befriending: befriending scheme for young refugees living the UK without their families
Charity objects
THE RELIEF OF FINANCIAL HARDSHIP AMONGST THOSE SEEKING ASYLUM IN THE UNITED KINGDOM OR WHO ARE REFUGEES, AND WHO RESIDE IN THE WEST MIDLANDS. TO PRESERVE AND PROTECT THE PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH OF THOSE AWAITING AND THOSE GRANTED REFUGEE STATUS AND THEIR DEPENDANTS.