Asylum accommodation — our evidence published

Back in February, along with many charity organisations in the sector, we submitted evidence drawn from the experiences of Home Office asylum accommodation by the young people in our community to the inquiry by the Home Affairs committee into Asylum accommodation conditions.

This evidence has now been accepted by the committee and is available publicly.

Our evidence highlights several areas of concern where urgent improvement is needed:

• too many contractors and subcontractors in the Home Office run asylum accommodation creates a fragmented system where information about individual needs is lost and holistic care is impossible; in particular, mental health vulnerabilities are routinely ignored and young people are placed in accommodation that is re-traumatising.
• oversight of individual accommodation providers is poor to non-existent; as a result quality of accommodation is sub-standard, with young people accommodated in places that “look like a crack den”.
• there is no overall holistic thinking in place to address the needs of young people for stability and rehabilitation; young people end up being routinely uprooted from communities without being given a chance to settle.

• current inspection regimes of asylum accommodation focus on buildings and facilities and not at all on well-being of residents. Best practice here is the model of inspections of supported accommodation offered by social services run by Ofsted

We hope our evidence and recommendations will help shape the work of the committee and lead to significant reform.