KERRI BISSOONAUTH AND LUKE ARUNDEL

Somewhere today in the UK, someone will open a letter telling them their asylum claim has been granted. This will be the news they have waited months or sometimes years for, but those receiving the news have little time to take stock of this potentially life-changing decision, as the moment they receive this notification is the moment a countdown starts.

A second letter follows, confirming the date their asylum support ends. This length of time has moved around a bit (previously 28 days, then piloted as 56 days), and since March, is 42 days from the point they are notified of the decision. In those six weeks, refugees need to, among other things, prove their status, open a bank account, claim Universal Credit (which typically is not paid for five weeks, so the first payment lands at roughly the moment they are asked to leave), and find somewhere to live. In some areas there are asylum move-on liaison officers, and where they exist they do helpful work that makes a meaningful difference for refugees. But they are there to help with the bank account and the benefit claim, and not there to help you find a job.

By the time the countdown starts, typically few of the practicalities for this transition are in place. Asylum support is administered by the Home Office and sits separately from mainstream services, an arrangement set out in policy and legislation. The move-on period is therefore the point at which people move into mainstream housing, benefits and employment services, having had limited contact with those services up to that point.

Almost all refugee employment support in this country begins after status is granted. This is due to a myriad of factors, including policy considerations such as not wanting to create ‘pull factors’ for people seeking asylum, and more practical considerations, such as that offering support before a decision is made inevitably means that it is offered to some people who are later refused.  

Why this becomes a homelessness problem

Due to the lack of prevention work, inevitably large numbers of people reach that point together, translating into pressure on the system. With many people needing housing and employment at the same time, working in a tight time window with limited knowledge of how the UK housing and employment system works, a number of newly recognised refugees end up experiencing rough sleeping. The most recent CHAIN (Combined Homelessness and Information Network) figures show that among people new to rough sleeping with information recorded about their last settled base, 21% had previously been staying in asylum support accommodation, up from 18% the previous year.

Outreach and crisis services play an important role in supporting refugees who are sleeping rough, but there are only so many rough sleeping pathway bed spaces, and refugee support needs, for the most part, are likely to be quite different from the average person sleeping rough. 

Most newly recognised refugees do not need a rough sleeping response, but rather need access to housing, recognition of qualifications they hold, English language provision, and access to the job market. Many are qualified, and willing and able to work, but find it difficult to operate in new and unfamiliar labour and housing markets. 

What we’re testing

Working with the Greater London Authority, Breaking Barriers, Croydon Refugee Day Centre, and Spires, we are piloting what happens when we start employment support before the decision, rather than after it. People are reached while they are still waiting for their decision, and offered help with two of the most critical aspects that can determine what will happen in the move-on period - how to find and pay for housing in the UK, and how work in the UK operates in practice. When a decision comes through, for those with a positive outcome, that support becomes intensive employment casework. For people seeking asylum who have been granted permission to work, this intensive casework can start immediately. The London-based programme will run over 10 months and support roughly 120 people seeking asylum and refugees. 

The added value of this intervention is in the pre-decision timing, rather than any single aspect of the support. While most of the work in this space begins the day people receive their decision, here the aim is that someone reaches that decision day already understanding how the system works, with a CV, and with people around them who understand their situation. 

Someone who has already built a CV, thought about which sectors they might work in, and understood what converting their educational or professional qualifications will involve, is starting from an improved point at the point they receive their decision. Their caseworker can go straight to the employment work, as pieces are already moving. 

This is not an entirely novel intervention, and there are pockets of good practice where versions of this support already happen. Through this programme and evaluation, we aim to give this approach more structure, test whether it can be delivered as intended, and find out what it would take for the approach to be implemented elsewhere. ‍‍

Prevention starts before the move-on period

What we are describing here is a response to a failure of different systems that are designed separately and operate on different timelines, but are experienced in practice by one person as a single journey. We are not going to prevent refugee homelessness by working inside the 42 day move-on period alone. If we want a different outcome at the end of the move-on period, we have to do something different before it starts.

Kerri Bissoonauth is Senior Programme Lead at the Centre for Homelessness Impact

Luke Arundel is Evidence and Data Lead at the Centre for Homelessness Impact

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