A refugee family with three children with disabilities have been supported to settle in Melbourne after a rocky start to their life in Australia.

Salam Mardali and Wasan Jabbo and their four children arrived in Australia in November 2019 settling in western Sydney. They had fled their home in northern Iraq in 2014 when ISIS attacked.

But as they struggled to find support for their children, the couple questioned their decision to come to Australia.

After less than three months in Sydney they made a move south and have found the support they need in Melbourne.

“In Sydney we had a bad experience, we could not get support for our children. Now we feel very welcome and grateful to be in Australia,” Salam said.

In Melbourne the family became clients of migrant and refugee settlement agency AMES Australia and were connected with critical services.

AMES Case Manger Rita Betto said the family had struggled to get NDIS approvals and find appropriate medical care.

“Salam and Wasan were very distressed and overwhelmed in their parenting roles when they arrived in Melbourne not knowing what services were available,” Rita said.

“Getting the family connected was not easy, there were communication barriers with medical professions and also determining what the correct referrals were,” she said.

“But we were able to support them to navigate the NDIS and connect with the Royal Children’s Hospital,” Rita said.

The children were also connected with appropriate local schools and child care facilities.

And the family was supported with orientation sessions to help them navigate life in Melbourne; also, they were supported to find housing and to access benefits and local community services. 

Salam and Wasan are now learning English and their children are settled in schools.

Their youngest son Youhan, 4, has speech problems but with support organised by AMES he is improving and can now speak in sentences in both English and Assyrian.

His older sister Tara, 18, has been enrolled in a special school in Craigieburn, in Melbourne’s north, where the family now lives.

Another sister Tamara, 16, is thriving at school and has dreams of becoming a surgeon.     

Rita said the family had shown amazing strength and resilience 

“Salam, Wasan and their kids have been very resilient throughout this process and they have worked very hard with all the professionals involved,” she said.

The family’s journey to Australia began in August 2014 when the militant Islamic group ISIS attacked the largely Christian city of Nineveh, in northern Iraq.

“Life was normal in Iraq before ISIS attacked out city. We lived a good life but when the ISIS came we had to flee,” Salam said.

As Christians, they were particularly vulnerable so they travelled to Erbil, in a part of Iraq controlled by Kurdish forces.

“We spent two years in Erbil. Although we were safe there it was not an easy life there. For the first year we lived in a church hall and in the second we lived in an old caravan,” Salam said.

In 2016, when the fighting had abated, Salam went back to his home city of Nineveh.

“Everything was burned down and destroyed. I had a house and several shops selling shoes and bags in the city, but I lost all of it,” he said.

“It was then that we decided to leave Iraq.”

Salam and wife Wasan gathered together the passports and documents they needed to leave and in 2017 headed to Jordan.

There, Salam worked for an NGO providing emergency relief to people from refugee backgrounds.

“We would support displaced families with rent, medicines, food supplies or whatever they needed,” he said.

Jordan was home for Salam and his family for two years and ten months. Salam and Wasan’s children were able to attend school during their first year in Jordan but their education was interrupted in the second year when they were only able to attend informal schools for refugee children.

In November 2019 the family came to Australia on humanitarian visas and settled in Fairfield, in Sydney’s west – but that was not the end of their trevails.

“We arrived in Sydney and we were surprised because of the lack of support we found because that was not what we had been told. We also were shocked by the language barrier and we realised that it was important to learn English,” Salam said.

“In Sydney we had a bad experience, we could not get support for our children – three of them are disabled – and it was very expensive to live there,” he said. 

“The people supporting us were not very compassionate or sympathetic. So, after 45 days we moved to Melbourne.”

Salam said the support he received in Melbourne from migrant and refugee settlement agency AMES Australia could not have been more different.

“To be honest, when we were living in Sydney, I thought we had made a mistake coming to Australia. But now we feel very welcome and grateful to be in Australia. Now I wish I had made the decision to come ten years ago,” he said.

Salam and Wasan are focusing on improving their English while also caring for their children.

Wasan plans to open a hair dressing business and Salam is aiming to find a job.

“I want to improve my English and the get job. When my kids are settled and independent, I want to look after my family and not have to rely on Centrelink,” Salam said.

“We are optimistic about life in Australia. We are very happy to be here. In our own country we experienced the abuse of our human rights. Here in Australia, everyone is respected.

“My family is in safe hands in a safe country where there is respect for everyone and no persecution. My kids have the support they need and are in school,” he said.