ROOF Blog

More than a third of refused asylum seekers have been destitute for more than a year and two-thirds of these came from countries with ongoing unrest and would find it difficult to return, a report by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust has found. The research recorded 273 destitute people during a four week period in April and May, including 30 children, and found that two-thirds of those surveyed came from four countries – Zimbabwe, Iran, Eritrea and Iraq.

The Refugee Council has warned that child refugees will be wrongly denied education and given no more help than adult asylum seekers in the UK, under changes introduced by the government. The charity says its Home Office funding, to work with asylum seekers whose ages are in dispute, had been cut leaving hundreds of vulnerable children at risk of being incorrectly assessed as adults. The Refugee Council estimate that as many as half of the decisions on age-disputed asylum applicants may be wrong.

Home Office figures show the number of people claiming asylum in the UK has jumped 27 per cent in the first three months of the year. Between January and March there were 8,380 applications – the highest number since 2004 – while during the same period the number of failed asylum seekers being sent home fell by 7 per cent.

Research has suggested that the tough policies designed to push asylum seekers out of the country by removing their support is simply forcing them to live on the streets, surviving on handouts. Last October, the Asylum Support Partnership counted almost 1,200 failed asylum seekers with no support or secure housing across the country day, from a group of 2,000 people found to be destitute with no housing or access to benefits or support. Half of these people came from Iraq, Iran, Eritrea and Zimbabwe.

England’s children’s commissioner Sir Al Aynsley-Green criticised the government’s policy of arresting children of failed asylum seekers and holding them in a detention centre before detention. He said that almost 2,000 children were held at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre each year and they had told him that the experience was upsetting and frightening , and had likened the conditions to being in prison. Sir Al has called for community based alternatives, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw said the government did not accept the commissioner’s conclusions.

A House of Commons’ select committee has warned that the state is failing in its duty to act as a parent to children in care by not protecting them from sexual exploitation, homelessness and crime. In its report the children, schools and family committee calls for a radical overhaul of the system to ensure that the most vulnerable children get the services they require. It says that concerns for the happiness and welfare of the 60,000 children in care should be at the heart of the system and that government is ‘too timid’ in demanding that health services and the criminal justice and asylum systems give special consideration to looked-after children.

A government homelessness adviser has admitted that charities are keeping homeless eastern European migrants alive, as the government ‘dithers’ over what to do with them. Michelle Binfield said that A10 migrants – from countries that joined the EU in 2004 – were a problem for the government as a minority had not managed to find work and were living an ‘alcohol-fuelled life’ on the streets. The government appears to be relying on a safety net provided by the voluntary sector to keep them alive until a policy response is decided.

The government will fail in its target to end rough sleeping by 2012 if it continues to ignore services for homeless people with mental health problems, Crisis and St Mungo’s warned today. A survey for St Mungo’s disclosed that as many as 85 per cent of rough sleepers were in poor mental health. Women, refugees and asylum seekers, the BME community and those who mistreat drugs and alcohol are particularly affected.

The appeal court ruled yesterday that failed asylum seekers with chronic illnesses were not entitled to free health care on the NHS even if they are unable to return to their homeland, although the ruling judges said that hospitals have the discretion to provide free treatment to individuals if they cannot afford to pay. The judgment determined that to receive free NHS treatment the patient must have resided lawfully in the UK for at least a year. The judges called for the process of choosing which patients who do not have to pay to be clarified by the government.

Hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers are living in the UK in a ‘twilight zone’ of extreme poverty, no housing and no right to work. A report from the refugee charity Pafras says on average failed asylum seekers were surviving on £7.65 per week, but the majority lived on less than £5. The charity called the destitution a ‘deliberate’ policy to force asylum seekers out of the country. As many as 72 per cent of failed asylum seekers had spent time sleeping rough outside following their asylum refusal.