Ethical social work practice with migrant children
Andy Jolly and Bozena Sojka have produced a toolkit on ‘No Recourse to Public Funds’ for practitioners. They have written this blog post ahead of its launch at a free online seminar on 31 October 2022.
Responding to irregular immigration and introducing a cap on the number of immigrants coming to the UK have been widely discussed across the political spectrum, with successive Governments developing a plethora of related policies. The political pressure to reduce numbers of immigrants led to the development of the ‘hostile environment’, including the so-called ‘go home vans’, increased use of detention, and citizenship revocation. Although, the ‘go home’ vans were withdrawn, the Windrush scandal highlighted problems, exposing the negative impact of the rising complexity of immigration law. For example, the no recourse to public funds (NRPF) rule is a less known element of the hostile environment that affects various migrants, even those with leave to remain in the UK and prevents them from accessing various services.
Although little is known about the size of the population with NRPF, Citizens Advice estimate that there are nearly 1.4 million people who have been given the NRPF condition as part of their visa or leave to remain, including 329,000 people with dependent children. In addition, recent estimates suggest that there could be as many as 674,000 irregular migrants in the UK, including 215,000 children, half of whom were born in the UK, who also are subject to the NRPF rule. Most families with NRPF are likely to never need support from children’s services, however, lack of access to most provisions of the welfare state means that when families face a crisis of unemployment, relationship breakdown, illness, or homelessness, it can be difficult to avoid destitution, and approaching local authority children’s services for ‘child in need’ support under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 is sometimes the only option for support.
We know from other policy areas, that policy is enacted in the mundane and everyday interactions of decision makers and public sector officials working in their specific organisational settings. For example, social workers from many services are likely to encounter people subject to NRPF. Social workers in all ‘front door ‘services (e.g., a MASH/screening team) are likely to encounter families subject to NRPF in their work. Despite the valuable guidance from the NRPF Network, there is no comprehensive governmental resource that would help them navigate the complexities of the NRPF rule. Social workers have heavy caseloads thus their time to study legal documents related to NRPF condition is limited. Also, social workers are not immigration lawyers, and should not be expected to analyse the legally complex NRPF condition as a part of their work. Social workers are decision makers who should be provided with clear guidance on the NRPF condition to facilitate their assessment and decision-making processes.
Driven by a concern surrounding the lack of clear guidance on the ethics of social work practice around the NRPF rule, a collective of social work practitioners, academics and third sector migrant rights workers came together to create a toolkit to provide a resource for social workers to understand and reflect on the implications for social work practice of the NRPF rule. The toolkit takes a human rights approach to practice and engages with the Professional Capabilities Framework (PCF), Social Work England Professional Standards, key legislation, learning from research and case study examples throughout, along with questions for personal reflection. The toolkit moves beyond just outlining relevant policy and law for social workers on the NRPF rule, to also engage with the ethical challenges of this area of work, encouraging critical reflection on social work practice.
NRPF social work produces many ethical dilemmas for social workers. Ethical, human rights-based practice as set out in the Social Work England Professional Standards, the BASW code of ethics, and the principle of the ‘best interests of the child’ sit uneasily with ‘hostile’ immigration policies which allocate support based on immigration status rather than on need.The toolkit aims to support social workers in understanding the law, policy, and ethical dilemmas of work with this group of children and families to enable critical reflection and provide better support to children and families with NRPF.
By including social work practitioners, service users, academics and third sector migrant rights workers in preparation of the toolkit, social workers in England will now have a reflective resource to explore how an individual with NRPF could be assisted in an ethical manner which is consistent with the professional obligations of social workers. However, although the aim is to improve social work practice in this field through a better understanding of the NRPF rule and its implications, the toolkit’s authors ultimately advocate suspending the NRPF policy altogether, in order to provide a safety net which protects all children irrespective of immigration status.
The Social Workers NRPF Toolkit will be launched on 31st October with a free online seminar. Tickets are available here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-social-workers-no-recourse-to-public-funds-toolkit-launch-tickets-411365393967
