Resource

Earlier this year, the government launched what it called the 'Family Returns Consultation'. Despite the name, the proposals in the consultation went far beyond family returns. They aimed to strip back support for people seeking asylum; restrict the help that local authorities can give to children and young care leavers; and expand the use of physical force against children during removals.

We believe these changes represent one of the most serious threats to child welfare protections we have seen in a decade. Many of the measures were first proposed in 2015, as part of the Immigration Act 2016, and were fiercely opposed at the time. The government has given no new evidence or rationale for reviving them now.

The proposals

The consultation covers three main areas:

• Cutting support for refused asylum-seeking families. Families whose asylum claims have been refused currently continue to receive support while genuine barriers stop them leaving the UK. The government wants to replace this with a much more restrictive system, tied to a strict 90-day window and a narrower definition of what counts as a "genuine obstacle" to return.
• Restricting local authority support for children and care leavers. Local authorities have a duty to support vulnerable children and young people under the Children Act 1989, regardless of immigration status. These proposals would prevent councils from considering a child's full needs when deciding whether to help them, and would cut off support for care leavers - including child trafficking victims - once they turn 18, unless they meet narrow immigration criteria.
• Allowing force to be used against children during removals. For over 15 years, it has been accepted that immigration enforcement is not a legitimate reason to use physical force against a child.

Our response

In our joint submission with Asylum Aid, we oppose these proposals in the strongest terms. Drawing on our direct casework experience and published evidence, we set out why:

• Forced destitution does not increase the number of families leaving the UK. A near-identical policy, piloted in the 2000s, was found by the Home Office's own evaluation to be ineffective — while nearly doubling the number of families who went missing.
• Removing local authority support and putting immigration status ahead of a child's needs contradicts long-standing child protection law and social work standards, and risks driving families into destitution, exploitation and disengagement from services that keep them safe.
• Using force against children causes real and lasting psychological harm. There is no credible justification for introducing it now, and no evidence has been published on how many children would be affected.

Throughout our response, we highlight real cases from our casework, including trafficking survivors and care leavers who would have been left without support, or at greater risk of exploitation, under these proposals. We also point to the absence of any published data or impact assessment, meaning the government is asking for views on changes whose true scale and consequences it has not attempted to measure.

We are calling on the government to abandon these proposals. Instead, we believe resources should go towards fixing the underlying problems in the asylum system, including poor-quality decision-making, which causes unnecessary delay and hardship, and towards making the voluntary returns process genuinely voluntary and trauma-informed.

Read our full response by clicking on the arrow below.