NRPF, child poverty and health outcomes.

David Stark, Research Fellow, University of Birmingham

We were interested last week to read the Children’s Commissioner’s report on Growing Up in Poverty, which highlights the ‘Dickensian’ levels of poverty experienced by 1 million destitute children presently living in the UK. The report makes salient observations on the impacts of poverty on children’s and young people’s lives, and the relationship between the welfare benefits system and child poverty.

Strikingly, from our perspective, however, there is but one reference within the report to the experiences of children in families denied recourse to public funds, and so unable even to access the welfare benefits under consideration.

This is, in a sense, unsurprising. While it is estimated that around 722,000 children across the UK are subject to the NRPF condition, and that 382,000 of these children are living in poverty, little firm data exists about these children, and no statutory authority presently has the responsibility for collating any such data. Similarly. while section 17 of the 1989 Children Act confers responsibility for the accommodation and financial support of these children to safeguard and promote their welfare, there is marked inequality both in terms of access to and delivery of this support from local authority to local authority.

Freedom of Information data obtained earlier this year by the UoB NRPF project on which I am working highlights this. While we have established that over 3000 children in 1800 families in England are presently supported under section 17, forty-one of the 151 (27%) local authorities in England told us that they had no way at all of identifying whether or not they were actually supporting children and families with no recourse, while 116 (77%) of these told us they were unable to identify how many families had requested an assessment of need but subsequently been denied support provision.. 9 authorities (6%) claimed to be supporting no such families at all. Thousands of children and families across the country are, in other words, to all intents and purposes invisible to statutory support providers.

While the High Court has determined that it is unlawful for local authorities to provide financial support for children cared for by foreign national carers with the right to remain in the UK at the same ‘subsistence’ levels made available under certain circumstances to children cared for by foreign nationals without the right to remain FOI data suggests that only 13 (9%) of local authorities are paying any regard to this distinction, with 138 ((92%) only acknowledging a duty to provide subsistence level support to prevent destitution, commensurate with Home Office asylum support levels. Indeed, several authorities volunteered that their support provision is significantly lower even than the Home Office’s £49.18 weekly allowance, with sums as low as £39.79 per person per week recorded.

We know that three quarters of children with no recourse either already are, or are soon likely to become British citizens. The presenting situation, then, is one in which thousands of long-term residents are being kept in conditions of deep poverty as a consequence of their parents’ or cares’ immigration statuses, while little or no information is being recorded about their experiences, and support provision designed to keep them from literal destitution is scattershot and inconsistent.

From the general direction of social policy travel, it is evident that this situation is unlikely to change any time soon. The Government has recently published its White Paper on immigration, setting out its determination to make both citizenship and settlement harder to come by, thus increasing the number of families subject to the NRPF condition, while the Leader of the Opposition, fuelled by a media discourse focused intently on the nexus between immigration control and welfare benefits reform, is calling for a complete ban on access to sickness and disability benefits for non-UK nationals. .Reform UK, currently high in the opinion polls and looking almost certain at the very least to play a part in the formation of the next government, has made the question of immigration ‘control’ a totemic policy issue and, again, has pledged to severely restrict migrants’ access to welfare benefits, with the party widely regarded as the most influential force in contemporary British political life.

Following political pressure from Reform-adjacent figures, the Department for Work and Pensions has today, for the first time, published data on the nationality and immigration status of Universal Credit claimants. Despite these figures detailing that 83.6%of applicants are UK or Irish nationals, and that just 1% are ‘temporary’ migrants, the data has, predictably, led to further calls for restrictions to migrants’ access to public funds.

There could scarcely be a more timely moment, then, to think about the long-term impact of curtailed access to the welfare safety net on the health and development of children and young people.

This is why our team is hoping to recruit people with lived experience of living with no recourse to who will agree to be a part of our project over the next 24 months.. We will be asking people to complete an online questionnaire, asking questions about their children’s health and wellbeing, once every 6 months. We will also be looking to hold more detailed in person conversations with a smaller number of people to discuss matters of particular significance.. We hope to start this work as soon as possible.

We are happy to complete questionnaires over the telephone if people are struggling with internet access, and we plan to travel to carry out the in-person interviews, to minimise any personal or financial inconvenience, but if you have any queries at all around data, travel or any other costs, please contact us. We absolutely do not want anyone to be left out of pocket by helping us with this project.

Ideally, of course, we are hoping that people will be able to commit to joining us on the project for the full 3 years, but we do understand that circumstances change and life can be complicated, so we respect that people have the right to withdraw their consent and leave the project at any time. We understand that confidentiality is important, and so we will be making sure that people who participate in the project remain anonymous, and cannot be identified personally.

If you are interested, or if you would like any further information, please contact me at d.r.stark@bham.ac.uk