Research on homeless refugees and asylum seekers

Research carried out by Broadway in partnership with the London Housing Foundation and the Refugee Council. The research was funded by the London Housing Foundation.

Briefing note: research about refugees and asylum seekers attending day centres

A recent survey about refugees and asylum seekers accessing homelessness services, undertaken by Broadway for the London Housing Foundation, highlighted an information gap in day centres. Twelve London day centres completed the questionnaire. Some key findings are below- these are followed by relevant points from a discussion about the research and possible approaches to obtaining a clearer picture of refugees and asylum seekers’ usage of day centre services.

Key findings from research;

o Figures provided by day centres included some actual counts and known figures and some estimates and as such should be treated as indicative rather than definitive.

o The number of refugees and asylum seekers accessing services during a week at the twelve day centres varied widely. Four of the centres saw no clients from this group, in five centres 1-15% of all clients visiting were refugee or asylum seekers, for two 16-30% were refugees or asylum seekers and one exception was a day centre where an estimated 31% of clients visiting were refugees or asylum seekers.

o Information supplied about the circumstances of refugee and asylum seeker clients homelessness was incomplete. The most common circumstance identified was approximately twenty people who have no where to move on to having left NASS accommodation after the stipulated twenty eight days. This was followed by people who are homeless for reasons other than the asylum system.

o The gender profile of refugees and asylum seekers accessing day centre services is 69% male and 31% female. The age profile is young, as is the case in hostels and for Outreach Teams. 78% of those included are under thirty-five years old. The majority of the fifty-three clients included in the country breakdown are from African countries.

o Day centres report that offering basic services such as food, clothing and showers and having open door policies attract this client group. The findings suggest that refugees and asylum seekers tend to self-refer to day centres or are referred by hostels.

o Key barriers for day centre staff in working effectively with refugees and asylum seekers are language barriers, lack of funds to work with this client group, lack of knowledge and training about working with this group and difficulties helping people who are not entitled to benefits.

o Ten of the fourteen day centres answering this section of the questionnaire stated that they had noticed an increase in clients from the new EU countries, three stated they had not noticed an increase and one returned a don’t know answer. Concerns about clients from EU accession countries include;

• Pressure on services due to lack of additional resources to deal with this new, sometimes large, group of clients
• The possibility of people who are sleeping rough becoming entrenched and developing support needs
• The inability to assist this group beyond basic needs given their lack of entitlements
• The potential tensions which may emerge between migrant workers and other homeless people.

Key points from meeting of providers, the London Housing Foundation

In meeting to review the findings of the survey, attended by homelessness providers, the London Housing Foundation, the Refugee Council and Unleash (Church action on Homelessness), the following key points were raised about day centres.

• The number and circumstances of refugees attending day centres and the types of service they access or attempt to access is an area which requires further investigation through information and monitoring systems and possibly also through further research.
• While the figures from the survey indicate that day centres see relatively few asylum seeker clients, it is clear that a number of refugees do approach day centres for assistance. This group makes up a significant minority of visitors to at least three major London day centres.
• There is a pattern of groups of refugees attending day centres in the belief that they may be able to access housing and ceasing to attend when they find that this is not the case. For many refugees, who want to advance into employment, training and recreation, day centres are not the best form of support.
• The figures do not suggest that many asylum seekers or refugees are presenting at day centres as destitute although this situation requires monitoring.
• The impact of EU accession is an issue of huge importance to day centres.
• Homelessness agencies are concerned that if an effective response is not made to this situation now, people who arrive from the new EU states with low support needs, could become the high support, entrenched rough sleepers of tomorrow.
• Homelessness agencies need to work together to develop a strong information base and where possible a collective response to this issue

Possible approaches to gaining a better understanding of refugees and asylum seekers accessing day centre services.

It is anticipated that London day centres will begin to use CHAIN to record client details and actions. Some developments to the whole of CHAIN are required to allow information about asylum seekers and refugees to be identified and analysed. Joanne Fearn will be discussing the implementation of CHAIN at the Day Centre Managers Group at Homeless Link.

The process of staff training and getting clients onto CHAIN is likely to take some time. For this reason the IMPACT group felt it would be useful to take some action in the short term. Options for this are:

o A group of key day centres is identified to complete a brief monitoring return form every quarter until CHAIN is established (around a year) indicating the number. These would ask for an indication of the number of refugees, asylum seekers and EU migrants accessing services, the number of new refugee, asylum seeker and EU migrant clients, the situation refugees and asylum seekers are presenting with, changes in the country profile of refugees attending etc.

o Issues to consider would be how accurate information submitted would need to be, how much information can day centres reasonably collect, how to select day centres for the project.

o This would provide factual information and estimates which would help to identify patterns in refugees and asylum seekers accessing services. The information would lend authority to the messages the sector is sending out on this issue and mean that we don’t have to rely on anecdotal evidence on a centre by centre basis. o A small piece of research is undertaken in one or two key day centre with researchers attending to interview staff, asylum seekers and refugee clients about their circumstances in the UK and the services they wish to access at the centre/s.

o Issues to consider would be how this exercise would add to existing information about this group (have we already got enough descriptive accounts?), to what extent would multi lingual researchers be required, how would day centres be selected for this exercise (it may be best to select day centres with good monitoring of refugees and asylum seekers so that descriptive information can be put in an accurate empirical context when reporting).

o A case study approach would give a clearer picture of why clients are presenting at day centres and more information about their experiences of accessing services in the UK.

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