If you have come to the UK and are seeking asylum here, you will be a child in care when you are under 18. You will become a care leaver when you turn 18.
Your Social Worker (whilst you are under 18) and your Personal Adviser will support you with advice and guidance. This is to help you to understand the immigration process.
We will:
- ensure you have access to legal immigration advice and work alongside your solicitor. You can use legal aid in the UK to help you make a claim for asylum. Find out more about this from the Right to Remain Toolkit
- arrange interpreters where needed
- try and help you to keep in touch with your family to let them know you are safe
- help you to go to education to help you to develop written and spoken English
- provide you with a leisure pass to access the local leisure activities local to where you live
- support you with taking part in community events and activities
- ensure you have access to the right support for your emotional and mental health needs
- support you with your physical health and accessing medical care. We can help you access private treatments if there are significant delays in accessing urgent treatment through the NHS
Your solicitor will help you with your asylum claim and a decision will be made by the Home Office.
While you are waiting for a decision from the home office, we will pay you a weekly allowance of £72. We will pay your reasonable rent costs. If you are granted asylum these payments will stop. This is because you can then work or claim benefits to support yourself.
Your Personal Adviser will help you to plan for the 3 possible outcomes of your asylum application (triple planning) within your pathway plan. This will include a plan for a successful application to remain in the UK . It will help you think about your plans for what happens if your application for leave to remain in the UK is denied.
It is important that you talk to your Personal Adviser about your immigration status so that we get you the right support.
If your claim is unsuccessful
If the Home Office have decided to not grant you asylum, and you have exhausted all avenues and rights regarding appealing this decision this makes you Appeal Rights Exhausted.
You may get a letter from the Home Office called a removals direction notice or a deportation order.
You will need to return to your home country. Your Personal Adviser will support you to think about your options.
If you are under the age of 21, your Personal Adviser will make an assessment called a Human Rights Assessment (HRA). This is to consider whether we can continue to support you or whether we will be ending our leaving care support to you. The Resource Panel will make this decision.
If you are over 21, your Personal Adviser will make an HRA. This is to consider whether ending our support to you would breach your human rights. We might continue to support you or will be ending our leaving care support to you with an agreed notice period. The Resource Panel will make this decision.
Useful contacts:
02073466700
Migrant Help
0808 8010503
British Red Cross
Get help as a refugee or asylum seeker