Report looks at families' inability to access free school meals despite suffering poverty and insecurity
Hackney Migrant Centre this week published a timely report examining the problems faced by migrant families with no recourse to public funds (NRPF) and their inability to access free school meals.
You can download the 14-page report here.
It states: "The report is based on Hackney Migrant Centre’s experience of working with families who were unable to access welfare benefits because of their immigration status. These families were vulnerable to destitution and homelessness before the COVID-19 pandemic. This crisis means that they now face even more serious threats to their ability to feed themselves as well as to their physical and mental health."
NRPF leads to "extreme financial insecurity, food insecurity and housing insecurity for many families."
Hackney Migrant Centre has advocated for free school meals for children from destitute families with NRPF since 2016. From 2018, it has been collecting detailed data on families' circumstances and the report summarises the data from this work.
The report states: "Many of the families were paying for school meals from incredibly tight budgets and sacrificing other essentials to do this. This is made painfully clear by the fact that 44% of the children were from households that told us that they were skipping meals. The actual percentage is likely to be much higher as not every parent was asked this sensitive and personal question. In the case of sofa surfing families who were dependent on their support networks to survive, it was not uncommon for a family to be spending a quarter to a third of their total income on school meals."
It continues: "All the families that Hackney Migrant Centre worked with on free school meals advocacy were destitute, yet less than a quarter were receiving section 17 [of the Children Act 1989] support when they came to us. Many families do not know where to access free and safe housing advice and as a result they may not know that section 17 support exists or if they are eligible for it."
As a result of advocacy work undertaken for 114 children, Hackney Migrant Centre says it was able to obtain free school meals for 71 children, while 7 children received increased section 17 subsistence payments to pay for school meals. In 24 cases, children were refused free school meals support, and no reply was received for 12 children.
Hackney Migrant Centre said: "Our advocacy was on behalf of a tiny fraction of the children that need the support of free school meals. The negative responses that we received show that schools cannot pay for all the children who are excluded by the current free school meals eligibility criteria without extra government funding."
The report was revised in light of the Covid-19 pandemic and it notes that on 6 April 2020 the Secretary of State for Education extended free school meals during the pandemic to many children from families with NRPF (for more on this, see Deighton Pierce Glynn Solicitors and Matthew Gold & Company).
While Hackney Migrant Centre welcomed the development, it notes, however, that the extension is only temporary and until guidance from the Department for Education is released, it will be difficult for schools to offer urgently needed food provision to the newly eligible families with NRPF.
Hackney Migrant Centre says: "Free school meals are essential to protect some of the most vulnerable children from hunger when there may not be enough to eat at home. It is urgent that all children from low income families, regardless of immigration status, are able to rely on the vital support of the free school meals system during the COVID-19 pandemic and after it.
"During the COVID-19 pandemic the government must adequately fund schools to provide food for every family that asks for this help regardless of immigration status. No questions asked, no immigration status recorded. Removing the eligibility criteria for free school meals will ensure that families with no recourse to public funds are not excluded, and it will also help countless other families in need as well. The government must also review the free school meals eligibility criteria so that after the pandemic all children who need this support are able to access it without exception."
More widely, the report calls on the Government to end the no recourse to public funds condition immediately and permanently to prevent families becoming destitute.
For more information on NRPF, the House of Commons Library earlier this month published a useful 18-page briefing paper, which you can download here, summarising who is subject to the condition and how it is applied.
The briefing paper also considers the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on those with NRPF and the calls to ease restrictions.