Support for children and families with NRPF

Local Authority Responses to people with NRPF during the pandemic

Universal Credit and Housing Benefit for all rough sleepers accommodated during COVID19 [and] accelerate immigration claims by rough sleepers’ (Williams, 2020).

Support for children and families with NRPF

The legal basis for providing support to children and families with NRPF in England is Section 17 of the Children Act (1989). Social care is a devolved responsibility, so legislation differs in the other nations of the UK. (In Wales the relevant legislation is Section 37 of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014. In Scotland, support is provided under Section 22 of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 and in Northern Ireland, Article 18 of the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995.)

Section 17 of the Children Act defines a ‘child in need’ as a child who falls under one or more of the following three categories:

· they are unlikely to achieve or maintain or to have the opportunity to achieve or maintain a reasonable standard of health or development without provision of services from the Local

Authority;

· their health or development is likely to be significantly impaired, or further impaired, without the provision of services from the Local Authority;

· they have a disability.

Although Section 17 does not only apply to families with NRPF, children in families who are subject to the NRPF rule are likely to be at risk of destitution, and would therefore commonly fall into one of the first two categories.

A number of services can be provided by local authorities under Section 17, including financial support to prevent destitution and accommodation for families at risk of homelessness. Support under Section 17 is provided following an assessment of need, and the support that is provided following an assessment should be outlined in a ‘child in need’ plan for those supported. There is no statutory guidance for local authorities around supporting children with NRPF, and no government guidance was issued during the pandemic. However, unofficial guidance from the NRPF Network is commonly followed by many local authorities (NRPF Network 2018). COVID-19 specific guidance was published by the network on 27 March 2020 (NRPF Network, 2020).

Prior to the pandemic, a number of concerns had been raised about support provided under Section 17, including inappropriate gatekeeping by local authorities (Price & Spencer, 2015; Dexter, et.al., 2016), poor standards of housing (Threipland, 2015), and inadequate levels of support (Jolly, 2019). These issues are likely to have been exacerbated by the pandemic. With widespread unemployment and loss of income, more people with NRPF have found themselves destitute and in need of local authority support. Local authorities, already underfunded and under the additional pressure of a public health crisis, are likely to have struggled to cope with the increase in demand. As a result, unlawful gatekeeping may have become more prevalent and the provision of inadequate support more likely (Pinter et al., 2020).