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This is the final report in a series of three for the Trust, on the delivery of services to destitute
Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Merseyside. As well as looking at the last year’s activity, it will also review briefly the project as a whole and how it fits within the asylum system in
Liverpool.
The city has undergone great change in the last year: the New Asylum Model and its faster process, the expansion of the BIA office in Liverpool to act as one of only two ‘in-country’ reporting centres and the development of the city as an initial accommodation (IA) centre.
These changes affect the way Asylum Seekers interact with the Asylum Link, the major factors being the speed with which people pass through the system and the volume of people accessing our services.
In practical terms it means we see more people for a shorter time. We no longer have the luxury of months and years for people to get to know us, and what we can and cannot provide. Similarly we have little time to learn about the people accessing our services before they move on.
There are still relatively few destitution services in the City specific to Asylum Seekers. The
Sisters of Charity run a 16 bed night shelter which operates 6 days a week, with the doors closed on a Thursday to ensure people do not become dependent. This is for men only. They also open a kitchen for a morning and evening meal which caters for considerably more people.
St Bernard’s Church, the sister church to St Anne’s where ALM work, and with the same
Priest – Father Peter Morgan, offers some accommodation, mainly for women and
Merseyside Refugee and Asylum Seeker Pre and Post Natal Support Group (MRANG) also support people out of St Ber nard’s. Some community college teachers take in students who become destitute on an ad hoc basis.
The Other services such as the Whitechapel Centre or the Basement are open to Asylum
Seekers for meals, however Asylum Seekers have little in common with the groups who normally use these services and tend to stay away from them. Statutory provision is only accessed where a child or baby is involved or where Mental Health is an issue. No recourse to public funding is a phrase we are all too familiar with.
There are now only 3 publicly funded solicitors in Liverpool doing Asylum work in Liverpool and with the new Home Office system of allocating people to solicitors early in the process, this means there is little capacity for doing complicated appeals work later on, as legal representatives are bottlenecked with new claimants. One, AS Law, recently closed their books to fresh claims for 3 months. Combined with a new attack on the reduction of medical services for Asylum Seekers, and general moves against migrants, the picture is not good.
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Looking specifically at Asylum Link, the services we provide to destitute clients can be summarised as follows:
Casework – access to caseworkers to look at traditional and alternative routes to progression – fresh claims and section 4 claims, individual campaigns, MPs,
Parliamentary Ombudsman.
Housing – short term hosting with a small group of volunteers, overnights in the Centre or in an ALM house where space permits and longer term housing within managed accommodation funded by Support for Asylum Seekers (SAS)
Cash Grants – £20 a week for 10 weeks through the Tudor trust and £20 a week for 10 weeks through SAS.
Emergency payments through SAS for medical necessities.
Food Parcels – staples for 1 week, funded through Liverpool Council for
Voluntary Services (LCVS) and donations from Nugent Care, churches, schools and individuals.
Toiletries – toothpaste/toothbrushes through donations from Lever Brothers, shampoo, soap and razors from LCVS and donations.
Clothes and bedding – access to the donated clothes
Temporary bag storage
Access to washing machine and shower facilities
Availability of a postal address and pick up point
These are the nuts and bolts of destitution support, however it is only one side of the story. There is also a social dimension to
Asylum Link’s work with refused Asylum Seekers which very much centres on the need for positive engagement with people, raising self esteem and self reliance.
Volunteers are the diesel in ALM’s engine and a balance is struck between taking on UK volunteers and those from the Asylum community, which allows a measure of stability within the volunteer group as well as reflecting the community ALM serves. Within the Asylum cohort several of the volunteers are destitute and there is also active encouragement to other destitute Asylum Seekers to get involved in the life of the centre. For example, 2 of our 5
Mental Health researchers were destitute. At various times through out the year destitute asylum seekers have accompanied staff to visits and presentations or given talks on their own. One woman has set up regular contact with the Warrington Peace Centre. One of the most poignant moments was when some of our service users and volunteers took part in the
BBC3 Liverpool Nativity. They took the part of the Shepherds and of the six, three were destitute at the time.
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3500
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
It is extremely important to remember that being destitute does not mean being written off. People need things to pin their hopes on and have anchor points that they can rely on in an uncertain world.
When they have these things they are much better able to cope with their difficulties and begin to find new ways forward.
Several of our bike mechanics have been destitute at various points in their journey through the system and all have made substantial contributions to the delivery of projec ts at St Anne’s. Belonging to groups or organisations and being part of a community is very important in the long term as it strengthens a persons Article 8 claim to respect for private and family life. On a practical note, making new friends and contacts increases the likelihood of support when things go wrong and making friends is something we actively encourage at the centre.
The North West receives 16% of section 95(dispersed) Asylum Seekers and, as can be seen from the graph, since the start of counting people through the centre, we have never been busier. The count is based on the signatures in the daily register and it is difficult to say how many individuals this equates to. Picking out individual signatures from our register is a painstaking process, however last year we identified 2000 different people, with the total number of visits for the year at 17,300.
Visits per month to ALM
Extrapolating these figures to current rates means we are on course for 25-30,000 visits from around 3-4,000 individuals. These numbers will stretch us to the absolute limit. In trying to identify where and how people are accessing the centre and the causes of the sudden rise in numbers, we have to look at how people arrive in the city.
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People move through IA in between 7 to14 days before dispersal to another area. With 250 bed spaces available this means between 4000 and 5000 people move rapidly through the city every year.
We also have cohorts of people in the city for longer periods: those dispersed to Liverpool from IA, section 4 claimants and ultimately people made destitute by the system. Legacy cases (people claiming before May 2007 and not in the New Asylum Model) also form a significant group.
Dispersal numbers are capped at 2900 and we estimate that there are between 1800 and
2000 people currently dispersed to Liverpool. This population will change over the year as people are refused or accepted. The reduction in time to reach a decision means as many as
3000 people may move through dispersal accommodation during a year.
Recent figures in Medical Reports indicate that there are 400 section 4 claimants in Liverpool but it remains to be seen how many have access to this support in the future. Recent developments have meant that Zimbabweans and Iraqis have been given letters warning them of a termination of their section 4 support.
Despite monitoring the situation locally, the number of destitute Asylum Seekers in Liverpool is still a difficult figure to calculate. Between three and five people per week present as destitute at ALM giving us a figure of between 150 and 250 people annually. National figures show that the mismatch between refusals and removals is slowly disappearing as the BIA tighten their procedures and the number of Asylum claimants falls, however this is still around 10% of all claimants.
There are approximately 24,000 legacy cases in the North West and Liverpool may account for ¼ of these – 6000 people. How many of these cases will become destitute, or are currently destitute, is a big unknown and the Government has stated there are only 2 possible outcomes from the Legacy programme: integration or removal. Ultimately the success rate of people through the process and the rigour of the removals programme will determine how many people become destitute. We feel that many of the legacy cases are already destitute as there is a mismatch between people refused and still supported, and the figures quoted for the North West region.
Daily Annually What the table shows is that at any one
Initial Accommodation
Dispersal
250
2000
5000
3000 time there are around 9000 Asylum
Seekers in Liverpool, with another 6000
Section 4
Legacy
400
6000
400
6000 who transit the city during the year. This number may seem very large in
Destitute
Total
300
8950
300
14700 comparison to the national annual claim of 23,500 for 2007, however 6000 of those are in the Legacy group and are not included in the 2007 claims figure, having come from previous years. The total is further inflated by the rapid transit of people through IA, a lot of whom will go into the Dispersal section. Many of the people within the Legacy group may be destitute. It is a complex picture and although we have requested clarification on the numbers from the Home Office, we have yet to receive a reply.
There are still questions around the number of people actually destitute in the city and we tend to count the people who become destitute rather than the actual number. In part this is due to the transient nature of destitute people, the fact that they do not keep in touch, but also because after a year many people will have found some sort of employment or some method of making a living.
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It helps to differentiate within the Destitute Cohort, between those newly homeless with no support or housing, and those who have been destitute for a time and have managed to find a living for themselves. This reflects largely the way people access services at ALM. Where they find alternatives, they drop out of contact with us and over half of the people tracked through the destitution project have to all intents disappeared.
The cumulative figure for destitute Asylum Seekers is clearly much higher than the 300 people we identified above. We feel that, nationally, between 5%-10% of all refused claimants become destitute. As people are not removed and drift into the alternative economy, this constant bleed adds to the numbers. This is a significant body of people who will have very few opportunities to re-engage with the system and will remain largely hidden.
Recent reports suggest there many refused Asylum Seekers within the ‘illegal’ group the government wishes to clamp down on. This tallies with the estimated legacy cases, originally
450,000.
Wednesday, 9 April 2008
“Estimates of the number of illegal workers range from 500,000 to 700,000, half of which may be
failed asylum-seekers.”
As we point out in our year review, the Government either has no clue as to the number of destitute Asylum Seekers in the country, or is choosing to ignore it. In 2003 and 2007 MPs question ministers as to the numbers of destitute Asylum Seekers on our streets, only to be told the Government did not know. In either case it is the voluntary sector who provide support to those requesting it: to quote a colleague at a recent meeting with the BIA,
“ cleaning up the Home Office’s mess .”
In a stakeholder meeting in 2007 with Jeremy Oppenheim, formerly the head of NASS, he made the Government’s position very clear. ‘ It’s not the Government that make Asylum
Seekers destitute, they do it to themselves. It’s policy .’
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The grant of £32,500 was split into 2 sections: £25,000 for salaries and running costs and
£7,500 for Emergency cash grants
Staff Salaries
Andi Briggs – Project Mgr
March07 – May07
Sarah Chierico – Destitution Support Mgr
June07 – March08
Bayo Omoyiola – Caseworker
June07 – March08
Maggi Green – Destitution Assistance
June07 – March08
Ewan Roberts – Centre Manager
June07 – March08
Employers NIC for salaries
March07 – March08
Volunteer expenses
Volunteer Expenses
Other Categories
Staff and Volunteer Travel
£7,668
£7,648
£1,843
£1,474
£504
£2,297
£1,094
£204
Seminars/Courses
Professional Indemnity
Project Mobile Phone
Printing/Stationery
£373
£163
£175
£57
Administration costs
Cash Grants
£1,500
During March 2007 to March 2008,
44 people received cash grants accounting for £7,500 of the grant.
The majority of payme nts were the standard £20/week, however one payment was made to a person in detention to allow them to travel back to Liverpool on release. Two payments were made to allow people to travel to access support elsewhere.
Several people did not reach their full 10 week allocation of the grant, having been taken into detention, removed or simply having disappeared.
When the Men’s house closed in February, all the occupants were offered cash grants whilst they found themselves new accommodation.
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One of the most difficult areas of work with destitute people is in relation to housing them.
This is primarily because demand outstrips supply, but also because of the need to oversee the use of the houses: internal disputes, repairs, relations with neighbours, as well as the high costs of the housing and associated bills.
Latterly, as less funding has been available for housing, the numbers of houses rented through ALM has fallen from 6 in the last year, to 1. We now have women’s accommodation only: 1 large 10 bedroom house. There will be a move back towards accommodating men, however, as will be seen later in the report, this will require careful planning and implementation if we are to avoid earlier pitfalls.
In May 07, following the resignation of Andi Briggs as Destitution Manager, the opportunity was taken to bring the project more within the day to day workings of ALM and involve more people in its delivery. A decision was taken that, with less than 9 months left for project delivery, no new recruitment would be made and that existing staff and volunteers would cover the post.
This had several effects:

Increased workload for existing staff – this was manageable through the summer and early autumn but as numbers have begun to increase rapidly, it leaves people increasingly stretched as they try to cover their allotted tasks.

A better understanding of how people used the destitution project and what their route through destitution will be, as well as a link between the previous managers figures and the day-to-day ALM casework database.
What emerged was that most people housed moved on in some way in roughly 12 months.
Those who do not progress, stay put. When the last men’s house closed in February, the majority of occupants had been housed for between 3 and 4 years. After the closure it became clear that many of the occupants had little or no difficulty in finding accommodation – only 2 people made section 4 claims and continued to attend the centre for destitution support.
ALM has had over 110 people in long term housing in the 3 years since the project began.
Most of the people who are currently housed with us have been with ALM for over 2 years.
This is a group of people who have been with us for a considerable time and have found no solutions to their problems.
There is a clear distinction to be drawn between male and female housing. Men find it easier to move on without support and are more able to cope with rough conditions. They also have access to the Sisters of Charity Hostel in the city centre. Women are more vulnerable, are less likely to access the type of casual work available in fast food outlets, building and security that many of the men find, and there is no women’s equivalent to the Sisters. In short, when it comes to the practical aspects of surviving destitution, it is easier for men. In a relatively short space of time Asylum Link will have to address the length of time some of the women have been housed and this will be a thoroughly unpleasant process. Several of them are long standing volunteers and very much part of life at Asylum Link.
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Women’s Accommodation
This year priority was given to finding new accommodation for the women. This was due to the unsuitability of the previous housing at Earle Rd and Bently Rd. Bently Rd was a 2 nd floor flat with no communal area, a front door which was never closed (thanks to the neighbours) and mice. Earle Rd had no real kitchen and an infestation of cockroaches.
The Women are now accommodated in one large house in Moscow Dr.
Moscow drive accommodates a maximum of 16 women, in 7 shared bedrooms and 2 single rooms. There is a large living room which could accommodate up to 3 more women in an emergency situation. This has been used on several occasions for overnights or weekend stays. We have set up billing systems for gas, electric, water, TV licence and council tax.
Although the property is very large it is only band B for council tax purposes. There was one large kitchen, which was extended with the help of 2 ALM volunteers who have installed an extra cooker, some donated cupboards, and who decorated an outhouse in which the extra fridge freezers are stored. Keeping fridges in the outhouse rather than bedrooms avoids hygiene problems.
There are currently 13 women sleeping at Moscow Drive and 3 spaces unoccupied. Due to concerns over new HMO regulations being introduced by Liverpool city council, we are working towards a situation where tenants will no longer share bedrooms.
Problems and other issues
– Moscow drive
ALM volunteers have dealt with numerous minor repairs, Emerald estates the letting agent have sorted out a leaking bathroom and 2 smashed front windows.
A falling out with our next-door neighbour was narrowly avoided, after one of our clients cut a
TV aerial cable, so that his girlfriend could watch TV in her room. Unfortunately after some complications with aerial repair men this cost us about £250 to finally resolve.
The women generally keep the house in a good clean state: they have a cleaning rota which they mostly follow and the house is visited at least once a week by a female member of staff, usually Sarah (Housing and Support Manager).
Men’s accommodation
In the past year the men were accommodated in separate houses in Kensington and Kremlin drive. The houses were not kept clean and were difficult to manage. The house in
Kensington was also located in a particularly bad area. There have been many racially motivated attacks in the area and the district is in a state of general decline. It was decided that, like the girls, the men should occupy one large house which could be visited more regularly. It took some time to find a large house suitable for the men to move into. However the move eventually took place in mid October and 16 men moved to Sandringham Rd.
The men’s houses were visited and checked every week by a male volunteer. Ben Kamara
(volunteer caseworker) also visited the houses every Saturday in order to enforce a much needed cleaning regime. The main problem with accommodating men is the apparent lack of respect shown towards any property. In one incident a fight broke out between 2 men and the result was that a bedroom door was kicked open damaging the wall and frame, the police where called and the neighbours disturbed. Although we tried to evict the guilty parties this was easier said than done. The eviction eventually took place with the move to Sandringham
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Rd: the evicted residents where simply not given keys to the new properties and the locks of the old properties where changed.
Unfortunately due to the level of damage caused to the previous properties, the cost of repairs, numerous complaints from neighbours regarding noise and the deterioration of the new property, it was decided by the board of tr ustees that this type of men’s housing was unsustainable and so a decision was made to close the men’s house at the end of January
2008.
Of the sixteen men, most moved out within the time limit of the notice period finding their own accommodation or are sharing with friends. 2 have applied for section 4 support and are awaiting a decision. All of those leaving Asylum Link accommodation have been offered financial support through the cash grant system whilst they find alternatives. Some people asked for the grant as a deposit for a house, most have declined the grant and seem to have other sources of income.
Asylum Link is investigating the possibility of using a smaller 3 bed terraced house, for short term emergency accommodation for men, however a firm plan needs to be put into place for monitoring the accommodation on a daily basis.
Housing summary
House
Kremlin Dr
Bently Rd
Earle Rd
Kensington
Sandringham Rd
Moscow Dr
St Anne’s
Gender No of rooms
M 6 bedrooms
F
F
4 bedrooms
4 bedrooms
M
M
F
M/F
Date of Use
Used till end of September 07
Moved out July 07
Moved out July 07
6 bedrooms
8 bedrooms
Moved out Sept 07
Opened October 07 – closed 1st Feb 08
10(9 Bed + living) Opened 10th July 07
1 male tenant
1 couple on section 4
Single Mother and Child
1 Family (mother and 3 children)
Other M/F 1 couple housed with a family
Moving on…..
Moving clients on and enforcing the 6 months only accommodation policy rule is extremely difficult. One of the obstacles faced is that the clients literally have nowhere else to go. It is difficult to insist that someone leaves our accommodation when they have no other means of support; they just come back to the centre looking for more help. Clients are encouraged to apply for section 4 support however many are refused when they eventually apply. Clients don’t keep appointments with caseworkers and are not at home when visits are made. (For the longer term occupants, in all likely hood this is because people are out working or can’t be bothered with a confrontation – either way we need to make people realise that their time with us is limited and that they have to be working on their case during the time they are supported. This should be the same for people who get emergency cash grants)
There are real issues with the ‘employment thing’. We have to recognise that destitution forces people into certain actions. If we will not supply cash along with housing, how can people travel to see solicitors, use their phones to keep in touch, campaign, petition etc.
Even NCADC encourage people to gather campaign funds.
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This puts us in an odd spot. On the one hand we don’t want to encourage everyone to go out and get bad jobs, poorly paid with little care as to their welfare or safety. On the other, how are people to get the cash they undoubtedly need to get by. In the past one of the ways that people have moved on is for 3 or 4 to get small jobs and once they reach a threshold, to move out and get a house together, or to move in with a friend who is ‘legal’ and to start contributing. 500,000 irregulars already live this way: is it time we faced reality?
These things are always known but never really talked about and certainly not encouraged when talking with people in the houses. There is probably a fear that if we know they are working, they will be evicted and so it’s never mentioned.
These are a few examples of clients who have voluntarily moved on to other accommodation
Suban Abdulle – Received Section 4, moved to Blackburn
Lunda Hi-Nzeza – Believe to be living with her daughter
Sarah and Ben Katushabe – missing from Earle Rd
Christian Ntandikura – removed after leaving his room empty – since claimed s4 and has now been deported. His family are in Holland and have been granted Asylum but Christian was returned to Burundi any way.
Naquvi Saayed – received status, moving out
Walid Khalid Karim – missing from Kremlin Drive
Hussain Sofi Zada – missing from Kremlin Drive
Faker Ali – couldn’t stand the mess and so moved in with friends – now has s4
Mobile phone
A mobile phone has been purchased, in accordance with the housing policy. It is a pay as you go deal from TESCO, the hand set cost £20 and it is toped up by £20 per month. The number is 07999859877. A notice is displayed in each property to indicate to tenants that this number may be called in an emergency. It has only been called twice out of hours, once due to the fight which broke out in Kremlin Drive, and the second time when the water at Moscow drive was cut off in the middle of the night during the Christmas/New year break.
Provision of cleaning products
A budget of £20 per month has been allocated to each property, a representative tenant purchases cleaning products and then presents a receipt to ALM. The trouble with the men’s house was that they were rarely used inside and never outside.
Other issues
We are still playing catch up with bills left over from previous properties, hopefully this will lessen as time passes by and the new properties are registered from the date of moving in.
As above, people still view Asylum Link Houses as a permanent fixture when what it represents is a short term emergency measure. We might consider letting people re-apply for housing after 6 months from their last date in the house, thereby letting them know we understand how difficult life can be but still forcing them to act.
At a recent staff meeting the need to reduce the levels of long term dependency on ALM /
SAS for accommodation was discussed. It was suggested that ALM might consider housing people only for the winter months, for Example October – March, or offering financial incentives to those who do manage to move out, Possibly £300 as £30 a week over 10 weeks or even a lump sum. This money could be paid for by SAS from the savings made on not running the houses.
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The Future
The future of housing provided by Asylum link is as ever dependant on the charity being able to secure funds via Support Asylum Seekers. SAS has been successful in securing the
Lenten alms donations from the catholic archdiocese for the past 3 years and was pleased to confirm that it has been promised any proceeds from collections made during this present lent season. However the costs of providing free accommodation are high: approximately
£100 per head monthly in a shared bedroom, and £200 per head monthly in an individual room. These costs include rent, council tax, utilities, minor repairs, furniture removals.
Discussions are underway with BOAZ in Manchester although a meeting with Green
Pastures in Southport has yet to take place. We hope to find alternatives through working more closely with other organisations in the future.
We currently have the luxury of a grant from Liverpool Council for Voluntary Services
(LCVS) . £5,000 was given in 2007 and the grant was renewed in 2008. This helps to provide staples such as sugar, rice and oil, which are given out once a month.
The purpose of the food and toiletries stores is to support asylum seekers who are destitute or in severe hardship by providing weekly grocery parcels and access to healthy food and to raise awareness of destitution in the local community and encourage locals to donate groceries. In Manchester BOAZ and the Red Cross have a well established food parcel service, ho wever, despite meetings and Red Cross outreach at St Anne’s this has not taken place in Liverpool although a Red Cross voucher scheme for shoes and clothes is in place.
Asylum Link Merseyside receives referrals from other community and statutory organisations. Also regular clients self refer when their benefits are stopped and they find themselves in destitution.
A record is kept of the names of those visiting the food store and the number of bags of food given out each day. It can be seen from our records that there are 40 individuals receiving regular food parcels. Clients are entitled to request food parcels on a weekly basis but not everyone accesses the food shore every week and so approximately 100 food parcels are given out each month.
There are 2 main sources of groceries, firstly those which Asylum link buys weekly, the weekly budget is currently £65, and records are kept of the quantities of groceries purchased. Funding for this budget was received from LCVS in the form of a grant of £5000 to be used over 18 months. The second largest source of food is a local St Vincent de Paul society group who make weekly contributions of food. Other smaller donations of food are received regularly from individuals and local church organisations.
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A typical grocery parcel would include, cooking oil, tea or coffee, sugar, UHT milk, tinned meat or fish, rice, pasta, chick peas, sweet corn, kidney beans, tinned tomatoes, pasta sauce, tinned fruit, peanut butter or chocolate spread. Plus one item from the toiletries list, shampoo, conditioner, toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, shower gel, sanitary towels, razors, deodorant.
Sometimes donations are received but prove unpopular with Asylum Seekers; items such as beans and tinned spaghetti. These are taken to the Sisters of Charity who run the shelter in the town centre where they are used when providing breakfast or the evening meal.
Toiletries are also given out with food and a recent agreement with Lever Brothers of Port
Sunlight has meant we are able to give free toothbrushes and toothpaste to people accessing the Destitution project. In the future we hope to tie this in with our Healthy Living programme and provide seminars through Liverpool University School of Dentistry.
For Destitute Asylum Seekers with receive no benefits or permission to work this project is a lifeline providing access to basic food and toiletries. This can protect people from malnutrition, begging or turning to crime in order to feed themselves. There is a high demand for this service, and so the food store is under a great deal of pressure to provide for many people with a very small budget. Hopefully our allotments can be used to supplement the tinned and dried food from the store with fresh produce.
During the past year this has covered many areas, from health care to fresh claims and casework is the gateway into ALM ’s destitution services. During the latter part of the year, following Andi Brigg ’s departure, all data available was drawn together on a single spreadsheet, from housing lists, SAS and Tudor grant lists as well as the main ALM database. This identified 400 people who have been tracked through the 3 years of the project although there were many others who were only seen informally. We by no means feel that all destitute Asylum Seekers pass through our door but this will account for a significant proportion of the destitute population.
240
Total Clients registered 401
30
26 25
15 13 11 10 7 6 5 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1
U nk no
H ou se d w n by
A
LM
Li vi ng
w ith
fr ie nd
S ec tio n
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4 er vi ce s
D ep or te d tu s
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o nl y
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M
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C as h
?
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o th er
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R et ur ne m
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s el f on
to
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w or k ew
c la im an t
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Page 12 of 20

The majority of people accessing services requested housing as their first need. As this is always a scarce commodity, cash grants and food were the next request. Some people had come in to ALM for other reasons such as help obtaining a driving licence or to help with cooking and we would find out quite by chance that they were refused Asylum Seekers and had all support withdrawn.
We have a full set of casework procedures with specific sections dedicated to dealing with destitute Asylum Seekers, however the process of accessing casework services is the same, as far as possible, as that for any other request for assistance. Casework has been taken away from the manager overseeing the destitution project and now rests with the casework team comprised of one full time and one part time caseworkers and around 8 volunteers.
The statistics behind the destitution project allow some conclusions to be drawn around how people make their way through life, surviving in this harsh environment. The graph overleaf was compiled in February 08.
The largest category of people, are those who have simply disappeared. It is unsurprising to anyone working with destitute people that this happens or that the proportions should be so large. Parliamentary questions in 2003 and 2007 on how many destitute Asylum Seekers there were elicited the same response from Ministers on each occasion: ‘we don’t know.’
Estimates range between 280,000 and 400,000 and we would say the higher figure is a better reflection. Where then are all these people and how are they managing.
Looking at the length of time people access destitution services through ALM, one year is an average contact time. After this people have made enough links to be able to exist independently and have no reason to contact us further. Some people continue to use ALM as a postal address, which is one way to maintain contact with the system. Around 40 people still use ALM as a postal drop.
The effect of making people destitute is to push them away from the immigration authorities and towards the alternative economy. Other statutory services such as the Police or Health
Services may be the only points of contact for people after they have been cut free of any state support. ALM has to have ways of re-engaging people with the system, especially in light of the Legacy Case programme. Once again the lack of clarity over the numbers involved is extremely confusing.
On the one hand, the Government has admitted that there were, as of February 07, there may be 450,000 people within the Legacy backlog. Given that the North West receives 16% of Asylum Seekers Nationally, 72,000 of those might be in this area. However as the people within this category made claims as far back as the 90’s, a large proportion will have claimed before the start of the dispersal programme and have settled in the South East.
The Local Authority in Manchester said that there were 24,000 legacy cases within the North
West which led us to believe that there would be somewhere between 6000 and 9000 cases in Merseyside. This contrasts sharply with the Liverpool Local Authority response that there were very few legacy cases in the city, hundreds rather than thousands. The likely explanation for this mismatch is that the people flagged up as legacy cases by Liverpool City
Council are those still in receipt of support, but the headline figure includes those legacy cases who are destitute.
People see caseworkers, for a wide range of assistance: section 4 applications, requests for housing, cash and food, HC1 medical forms, appointments with MPs as well as moral support. Sometimes people are seen because of violent incidents: racist attacks, stolen handbags. Section 4 applications often go hand in hand with fresh claims and we have a strong relationship with AS Law, one of the few local solicitors still doing publicly funded
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asylum work, although they recently withdrew from doing fresh claims work because of their workload. Despite the rise in numbers of Asylum Seekers through the city, there are only 3
LSC funded solicitors doing Asylum work. ALM, although qualified at OISC 3, has limited resources to carry out legal casework at a sufficiently advanced level to be useful and new ways of assisting people are constantly sought.
Example
Nabi
As successful appeal was taken forward by ALM for this gentleman, however the
Home Office, in turn, appealed the decision on a point of law and a court date was set. The appeal was to be heard in a higher court and a barrister was needed to present the arguments.
This left us in a dilemma; although we were sure of our ground, we could neither afford the court fees, nor the services of a barrister and even then, we are not permitted by law to instruct barristers. So we needed to find an alternative solution.
Having contacted the judge from the original case, he was amenable to us handing the case over to another solicitor, who would have access to public funds to represent Nabi. We therefore set about finding another solicitor who would take on the case, with ALM having done all the leg work in terms of the arguments and precedents.
In the final event, a local solicitor, AS Law, with whom we have a good working relationship, took on the case using ALM ’s background work and the case was successful.
Looking at alternatives routes through the system is one way of progressing people’s cases when they feel they have exhausted all the options. We are constantly trying new routes for people and pushing different parts of the system to see what gives results and what can be used.
One thing we have found particularly helpful is to form relationships with individuals within the Home Office, particularly the NAM caseworkers, through whom a lot of support can be accessed. This has even led to a change in or Personal Record forms where NAM caseworker name and contact are now required fields.
Whenever someone at the Home Office does something for us we make sure they are thanked either by phone, fax, e-mail or letter. By putting a human face or voice to the Asylum
Seekers they deal with we hope improve conditions for the people we work for, and this includes getting the best out of the Home Office wherever possible.
The following case study shows how perseverance and determination on the part of the client and ALM finally paid results.
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Case Study - Gaby Vasilis
Sunday 3 rd August 2003
The headline above and the accompanying photograph show how Gaby arrived in Britain 5 years ago by rowing across the
English Channel in an inflatable rubber dinghy. On arrival he was advised to claim asylum by someone in the Home Office and was refused a short time later. Held in detention, the government tried unsuccessfully to return him to his home country of
Kazakhstan where he was refused entry as they did not recognise him as a citizen. Checks with other countries he had possible links with also proved fruitless and during this period he was held in 6 different detention centres from Dover to Dungavel, even Greenock Prison for a short period. Gaby’s 15 months in detention were a harrowing experience in which he witnessed the self harm and suicide of other inmates and also self harmed himself, eventually going on hunger strike. He was released in the London area, without support, housing or permission to work. Having made his way to Croydon and Lunar House, he was given a train ticket to Sheffield, where he was told a house awaited him.
In the event, the house already had a family in residence and so the Police were called when Gaby was refused entry. After a check with the Home Office, it was established that Gaby was not going to be housed or supported and the incident ended with one of the Police officers giving him £20 and telling him there was nothing they could do. He became destitute.
Having no other clothes, Gaby was still dressed in what he had been given in the detention centre and so to feed and clothe himself properly he began shop lifting. After a few days he was caught but released after the Police contacted the Home Office and were advised to let him go.
This began his trip to Liverpool and over the next weeks he made his way to the docks in
Birkenhead, hoping to get a boat to Ireland. After sleeping rough and being refused entry to any of the ferries, he crossed the Mersey to the Liverpool side and was sleeping rough in the parks around the city. During this time he got most of his meals by picking through the bins outside
Chinese Restaurants. On one occasion he was attacked by a group of youths as he washed in the pond in Newsham Park.
In April 2005, after 3 months of living rough he was loosing hope and went into the office of Radio
Merseyside in its former site in Paradise Street. From there he was directed to Asylum Link and came into contact with the destitution project. He was housed for 8 weeks whilst
Refugee Action made a section 4 claim and subsequently moved into a house near the centre.
Unfortunately Gaby’s mental health had deteriorated and when he want to the local ASDA with his luncheon voucher, they refused to give him soap, shampoo or razors as the voucher was for ‘food only’; he reacted badly. ‘They don’t even want me to keep clean, They treat me like an anim al.’
At this point something snapped and he went on hunger strike, pushing steel wires through the soft parts of his upper and lower mouth and twisting them shut. This was quite a horrific thing to do and beyond what many people working at the St Anne’s Centre had experience of. The Home Office were contacted on many occasions but failed to act or give advise. Members of the PCT Social
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Inclusion Team assisted with referral to a GP and a visit from a community nurse. During the time
Gaby had the wires in place, he stayed at the centre, always accompanied by a member of staff.
After days of argument he was finally convinced to take the wires out and his hated vouchers would be swapped for cash. The other condition he made was that the photograph overleaf be taken.
He was registered with Gwilym Hughes, a firm of solicitors from Wrexham, who provided outreach at St Anne’s and new applications for leave to remain were made. After a year with no progress,
Gaby moved to another local solicitor, who made further representations to the Home Office, but again with little or no result.
During this time he has swung between depression and normality, still on section 4 and still receiving the voucher which we regularly swapped. When our allotment project started in 2006,
Gaby quickly threw himself into the work and produced huge quantities of potatoes and tomatoes from our 2 plots. He also made friends with some of the other plot holders who were extremely impressed with his hard work and commitment. One of the reasons, we later found out, that Gaby was working so hard, was to exhaust himself so he could sleep at night.
Gaby also approached the IOM to see if there was any possibility of return to his home country but, after a short investigation, they refused to sign him up. After several house moves Gaby became increasingly frustrated with the section 4 system and the apparent inactivity of his solicitors, so we decided to try another avenue and make formal complaints about his treatment, to the Home Office and to the Parliamentary Ombudsman via his MP,
Louise Ellman. The argument essentially was based on the fact that Gaby was stateless and leaving him indefinitely on section 4 was extremely detrimental to his mental health.
The original complaint to the Ombudsman wa s sent in September 2006 but during the MP’s office move, was misplaced and was resubmitted again in February 2007, and got through the first stage as Louise Ellman agreed to forward it to the Ombudsman. Over the coming months we were contacted by the pers on dealing with the complaint in the Ombudsman’s Office, for further evidence and to map out a time table for reporting and investigation. In the autumn we were contacted by a Home Office Ombudsman Liaison Officer, who was working on the case and who said things were heading towards a resolution. Gaby was also given assistance in his complaint/campaign by plot holders at the allotment who lobbied on his behalf.
In November 07, although things were slowly moving forward, yet another house move following a provider contract change, from a self contained flat shared with 3 people, to student hall type accommodation, sent Gaby into a deep depression. He began sleeping in a small room at the back of the church, without heat, rather than take up the new accommodation. At this point he was extremely low and several of the staff took him home with them from time to time.
Just when he was on the point of disappearing, a letter came from the Home Office, granting him 3 years discretionary leave to remain – no reason was given. When the Ombudsman was contacted, it seems that even though the interim report had not yet been submitted to the Home Office, the request for information; medical reports, case history and so forth, had prompted a speedy response. This was confirmed after contact with the Home Office Liaison Officer and subsequent emails from Home Office workers.
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The main reason that Gaby was granted leave to remain is that neither Kazakhstan nor the
Ukraine would accept him as a citizen, something which was known in 2005, yet it took a further 3 wasted years to force the Home Office into making a decision. There are now several people who are attempting the same route to Status.
Although Gaby now has leave to remain, his problems are not over. It took 3 months to get a permanent National Insurance NI Number and his application for housing was lost as the Council’s computer system will not accept Temporary NI numbers and the paper copy of the application went astray. ALM still provide housing for Gaby as well as access to training courses in the construction industry: the CSCS Health and Safety Qualification.
The extra support provided through Asylum
Link has enabled Gaby to maintain some sort of normal existence whilst his case has progressed: he still keeps up the allotment and is now doing up a house for ALM whilst he lives in it. The social interaction alongside the casework has kept him on track when he could have easily descended into deep depression.
The picture on the right shows Gaby building a bread oven from recycled bricks in the garden at the back of the Asylum Link Building – he just likes to keep busy!
Gaby is as integral a part of Asylum Link as we are for him. Had it not been for the destitution project and the caseworkers and the volunteers at the centre, there is no way of telling how his life would have turned out. Now, for the first time in many years, he has a place he can call home and people he can rely on.
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During the last year ALM has partnered a research project for the Care Services
Improvement Partnership CSIP, supported by the University of Central Lancashire UCLAN, and including Asylum Seekers, Elderly Chinese and Irish and Irish Travellers, into the barriers to accessing mental health services for these groups.
Several things have emerged from the research specifically around depression and the way it affects asylum seekers. Generally, half the people interviewed were assessed as suffering from depression at the point where clinical intervention was required. The tool used was the
Patient Health Questionnaire Nine PHQ9 and significantly, of the 6 destitute Asylum Seekers who took part in the survey, 5 had significantly high scores.
The PHQ9 uses a score ranging from 0 (no problems) to 28 (suicidal thoughts). 15 is the level at which clinical intervention is advised and the scores from the destitute participants were: 14, 19, 21, 23, 27 and 28.
Of the people housed with ALM, although people rated the housing as good, lack of privacy was cited as a problem. Within the male group, dirty bathrooms, personal hygiene and rubbish within the houses caused difficulties, but as has been discussed earlier, this was a problem which had built up over a period of time and, along with a general lack of funding, led t o the closure of the men’s housing.
Some of the people we see at Asylum Link already self harm. With the high incidence of depression within the destitute group affecting 80% of people, it is clear that unless destitute
Asylum Seekers get access to health services, particularly mental health services, they may develop serious problems, becoming a danger to themselves and possibly to other people.
Alongside the Tudor funding has been the individual donations and funds raised from
Summer Fairs, Book Sales etc, but this has paled into insignificance beside the grants received through Support for Asylum Seekers, which, along with Tudor has been the mainstay for the destitution work. This is taken from church collections around Merseyside and also has benefited from the Lenten Alms, an Easter collection through the Catholic
Church, which ALM has benefited from for the last 2 years. Archbishop Thomas Kelly recently visited the centre to see the work carried out and is very supportive of Asylum Link in general.
Significant grants have also been received from Liverpool Council for Voluntary Services
LCVS, and from John Elliott, the Secret Millionaire. The LCVS money has been used to stock the food store and this year another £5000 was given for the next 18 months. This means we have £65 per week to feed 40 people, and often the food store is bare. This is supplemented by donations and regular drop offs are received from Nugent Care.
Sustainability for the longer term is a difficult challenge and much of the project will still rely on grant aid. Meetings are being arranged with BOAZ and Green Pastures to discuss collaboration and how Asylum Link’s situation might fit with existing models. The set up of a not for profit arm has long been proposed but never properly explored. This would allow funds currently directed towards rent to be put into a mortgage and retain funds within the organisation. This has begun with the renovation of a house donated to another Refugee
Organisation in Liverpool. Crash (Construction and Property Industry for the Homeless) have been approached to provide funding for the renovation.
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The difficulty as ever, attaches to the exclusion from public funding, of the people we seek to assist. The type of scenario envisaged is one where people with status are given housing benefit whilst in the house and this covers the majority of housing costs. Asylum seekers would get the use of 1 of 3 or 2 of 4 rooms in the house, with their other support costs covered by ALM.
After the receipt of many donations following the production of our year review, we have now started to produce a monthly newsletter for friends, members and funders, which will keep people informed as well as generating an income to fund areas such as the food store or toiletry cupboard.
Running through a lot of ALM’s work is funding from the Lottery for Health and Well Being projects, notably Healthy Eating and Cooking, Oral Hygiene sessions, Allotment and Cycle
Clubs. Some of the funds for this programme will be directed towards destitute Asylum
Seekers either for participants or through our destitute volunteers in terms of travel expenses or meal allowances. This will be mainly to improve people’s mental well being, and demonstrates how a grant can be used flexibly to provide low level/top up support. For example, where someone has a weekly bus pass to the allotments, this saves them money on transport, whilst at the same time providing healthy activity and opening doors to other possible support.
Publicity for the project and for highlighting destitution has come in many forms over the last year. For the first time ever, we were invited to join the City Council’s Homelessness strategy group and have tabled amends to the Housing Strategy to be launched on the 28 th of May.
Unfortunately there is still a yawning gulf to be crossed, between access to public funds for refused Asylum Seekers and what will actually be given. At least there will now be an acknowledgement within the Council of those people without recourse to public funds: this was prompted more by migrant workers rather than asylum seekers and when ALM attended the strategy group, there was a sense of disappointment that we would not be able to deal with the destitute Eastern European migrants currently presenting as homeless at the
Council One Stop Shops.
In advance of the Destitution Roadshow we have continued with our talks and presentations to different organisations, with an increasing emphasis on destitution. Our strength is working with individual Asylum Seekers to get their point over to the people we are seeking to influence and time and again it is the personal testimony of people that makes the difference.
In the last year we have given talks to the Passport Agency in Liverpool, The Environment
Agency in Warrington, presented at the NACCOM (No Accommodation group) hosted by the
BOAZ , the Operation Eden final conference, the Church Urban Fund review in the Liverpool
Anglican Cathedral and at various schools and Justice and Peace groups. We have also presented evidence to The Independent Asylum Commission and to the Centre for Social
Justice. www.humanrightstv.com/episode/132 www.humanrightstv.com/episode/166 www.humanrightstv.com/episode/138
The Red Room TV company have recently been filming at the centre and at our allotments, gathering material for a theatre production later in 2008. www.theredroom.org.uk
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We are still a long way from becoming a society which treats Asylum Seekers as equals and values their presence in this country. What people begin to realise during the talks and presentations we give is that, with Asylum claims at a 15 year low, they are very lucky to have met an Asylum Seeker and had the opportunity to ask questions or share some time with them. They also frequently express disbelief at the harshness of the system or the way people within it are treated. Asylum Seekers are not the big scary monsters that the
Government or the Press would have people believe.
Developing different contexts for interaction and dialogue is crucial to getting our message across to people and along with this comes the added benefit of making the Asylum Seekers we work with feel part of the society they find themselves within.
The 3 main things we will be highlighting in the coming years are:
1. the right to work – this benefits Asylum Seekers moving through the Asylum process, as well as those at the end of the line.
2. that no Asylum Seeker should be made destitute – food, clothing and shelter are basic human fundamentals. To deny these to basics to people treats them as less than human beings and is not acceptable.
3. that the Asylum Process should provide more opportunity for people to make their case – speed is no substitute for accuracy.
The realisation of these 3 goals would go a long way to assisting the plight of Asylum
Seekers in this country. At the same time we will continue to support the primary needs of destitute Asylum Seekers for food, clothing, shelter and access to the system that has discarded them.
For ALM this means hard work, both in providing support to those in need, and increasingly to educational and awareness raising programmes, such as the road show. Where ever the possibility exist we will portray the positive image of Refugee issues, one which we feel more accurately reflects the truth.
Report compiled by
Ewan Roberts, Centre Manager
Sarah Chierico, Deputy Manager, Destitution Support
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