Policy paper

Response to an inspection of asylum accommodation in Northern Ireland

Updated 1 March 2024

The Home Office response to the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration’s report: An inspection of contingency asylum accommodation for families with children in Northern Ireland.

May – June 2023

The Home Office thanks the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) for this this report ‘An inspection of contingency asylum accommodation for asylum seeking families with children in Northern Ireland’. The Home Office is grateful to the ICIBI for the effort that he and his team have devoted to this inspection to examine any improvements needed to ensure we are fulfilling our statutory obligation to accommodate destitute asylum seekers.

The ICIBI identified several areas for improvement and has made 5 recommendations. The Home Office has accepted 2 recommendations and partially 3 recommendations. Work is already underway to take forward the recommendations in this report to ensure that we continue to meet not only our statutory obligations in Northern Ireland but also to support the delivery of the Home Office’s broader aims in the UK, in responding to the findings.

Recommendation 1: Safeguarding responsibilities

The Home Office should clarify the respective safeguarding responsibilities of all agencies, including contractors and sub-contractors, involved in supporting asylum-seeking families with children in contingency accommodation and communicate this to stakeholders.

Accepted

The Home Office and its accommodation providers have robust processes in place to ensure that where someone is at risk, they are referred to the appropriate statutory agencies of the police, NHS and social services, to promote appropriate safeguarding interventions.

All Home Office staff, and contracted parties have a duty, under section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009, to ensure that immigration, asylum, and nationality functions are discharged having regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in the UK. As part of this, staff are advised to make a referral to local authority children’s services or the police where they identify a child who is at risk of abuse or has come to harm.

Similarly, staff must consider referring a concern to local authority adult social care services where they identify an adult who may need care and support, or has care and support needs, is at risk of abuse or neglect, and is unable to protect themselves. They are also advised to contact the police first where a crime has taken place, the abuse is happening now, or the risk is immediate.

This clarification and mapping of responsibilities will support in any review, assurance or dialog internally or externally. Clarification of roles will ensure there is no uncertainty of what actions should be taken to protect at risk adults or children, as well as defining relevant authority responsibility.

It is accepted however, that the HO should outline the responsibilities towards those being accommodated as well as defining where other authorities have the statutory duty.

Recommendation 2: Capturing the views and concerns of children and young people (including safeguarding)

The Home Office should work with contractors providing accommodation, and advice, issue reporting and eligibility services, to:

• produce child-friendly materials informing them how to raise safeguarding issues confidentially

• ensure routine capture of the views and concerns of children and young people to identify improvements required to better safeguard and protect their health and wellbeing

Partially Accepted

It is accepted that existing materials could be strengthened to ensure minors have discreet access to information if experiencing difficulties whilst in asylum accommodation.

The majority of products developed by the Department (Home Office Guides to Initial Accommodation and Dispersal Accommodation, Rights and Responsibilities of Living in the UK, induction materials) are aimed at adult asylum seekers in their position as the support applicant, with robust information supplied on the asylum journey, key touchpoints, avenues for additional information and advice as well as insight into rights and expectations pertinent to their role.

Although it is considered that minor dependents fall under the responsibility of the parent/guardian to support and safeguard, it is accepted that in instances where this relationship is not available, or is the subject of concern, it would be useful to include relevant support organisation details – such as Childline UK – in the materials available to signpost those in need of these services. Following this recommendation, the details for Childline have now been included in the Home Office Guide to Living in Initial Accommodation.

The Department does not accept that it should directly approach children to procure their views and concerns. The Department feel this would be inappropriate considering consequent legal barriers that would impact on our ability without consent/supervision of a responsible adult.

Equally, staff training extends to identifying and referring risk (including those involving minors) to the relevant statutory organisations as opposed to actively advising and engaging directly on these matters. Such direct engagement would be more appropriate through established platforms / processes via schools and local authorities where staff have the requisite skills and qualifications. We will ensure that these statutory obligations are clarified as part of Recommendation One.

Recommendation 3: Advice, issues reporting and eligibility contract

The Home Office should review the effectiveness of the advice, issues reporting and eligibility (AIRE) contract, in particular the processes for capture of complaints and feedback from those living in contingency asylum accommodation, to identify trends, improvements required and good practice.

Partially Accepted

The Customer Experience Survey seeks feedback on the Migrant Help asylum seeker journey and interaction. This survey’s transition to the Qualtrics platform under Home Office control on 18 July 2023 will enable increased accessibility and ease of promotion, mirroring of the Asylum Accommodation and Support Contract (AASC) provider survey. This will thereby ensure consistency, enhanced analytical capabilities for both Migrant Help and the Home Office in scrutinising the data and will also data integrity to facilitate publication in the coming months. Preliminary results show more data was collated by the end of September, than on average for the previous quarter.

Acting as a first point of contact, Migrant Help record pertinent complaint details and share with the appropriate provider within 30 minutes of receipt. This is then the responsibility of the appropriate organisation (be it the Department, AASC provider or Migrant Help themselves) to fulfil within a target timeframe. Where the appropriate service level agreements are not met, automated escalation occurs to ensure review and resolution.

There is a well-established, effective complaints mechanism available through Migrant Help that is routinely utilised to record dissatisfaction with service delivery and progress via the relevant organisation for resolution which is the basis for this recommendation.

Migrant Help themselves receive a negligible number of escalations (requests for their initial responses to be reviewed by the Home Office), averaging less than 2 a month in 2023 to date. This in itself suggests satisfaction with Migrant Helps own response to the issue at hand in the first instance, in particular considering the volumes of contacts made daily to the helpline.

Recommendation 4: Assurance process for safeguarding standards

The Home Office should strengthen assurance and monitoring arrangements to ensure accommodation providers, and their contractors and sub-contractors, are meeting all the standards set out in the Asylum Support Contracts Safeguarding Framework (May 2022), as well as the respective contractual requirements.

Accepted

Whilst routine monitoring of safeguarding, through regular informal and non-routine communication and sharing of cases is undertaken - there are no formal Key Performance Indicators for safeguarding.

It is accepted that assurance and monitoring of safeguarding within a contract management space can be reviewed and further strengthened. The Home Office is in the process of developing a framework to enhance quality assurance of the AASC provider’s safeguarding responses.

Additionally, as part of this process, the AASC Safeguarding Board has already been re-instated, with its first meeting having taken place in August 2023.

Linked to Recommendation One, the HO will ensure that assurance and monitoring arrangements are clarified as part of statutory obligations of agencies, contractors and sub-contractors.

Recommendation 5: Data quality, recording and sharing

The Home Office should:

• address weaknesses in systems for recording and monitoring safeguarding incidents, including referrals, as identified by the ICIBI’s previous contingency asylum accommodation inspection in 2021
• review the quality and completeness of data collected regarding the vulnerabilities and needs of families in contingency accommodation
• ensure that appropriate data sharing arrangements are in place between the Home Office, Mears, statutory agencies, and other organisations as necessary to allow all agencies to identify, respond to, and manage safeguarding risks and service users’ complex needs

Partially Accepted

The HO can only collect information/data for the purposes of immigration (processing of an asylum claim). Information on vulnerabilities is generally only known if an individual decides to share. In respect of health, information is only obtained if it impacts the type of accommodation required. Information on vulnerabilities is maintained on HO systems on a case by case basis.

GDPR is not intended to be an obstacle to safeguarding. Those making referrals, however, still need to operate within the legislation - essentially, be satisfied that there is a genuine and proportionate need to share information in specific case/situation in order to prevent harm. The challenge is the format / method of data sharing - the HO will work with partners to review the blockers to effective communication in this respect.

We accept that there has sometimes been a lack of clarity between HO / Mears / TEO about what can be shared and when. Part of this will be addressed by ratifying a data sharing agreement which was drawn up earlier this year therefore the recommendation is being partially accepted.

Linked to Recommendation One – this will need to be considered in light of HO and partner agency statutory obligations and responsibilities.