4. Barriers to accessing particular public services and/ or facing particular groups
The premium was based on the school census which took place in October each year; when children arrived after October, this could act as a disincentive on schools providing places for children as the premium would not be received for that year. One W1 participants said that “the child effectively goes to the bottom of the pile” . PB5 noted that there had been discussion of this issue, but that since additional premiums were also available to others apart from newcomers, any changes would require “a whole scale reimagining of the common funding formula under which schools are funded in Northern Ireland, which is much broader than our newcomer children or children seeking sanctuary” (PB5). PB5 noted however that the Home Office, The Executive Office, and the Department for Education all provided additional funding to help ensure children were supported in schools “… which I suppose you could almost say tides the school over until they get the newcomer premium in the following year” (PB5). Change in Education Authority support for families in hotels An issue that was frequently raised by participants related to a change in the Education Authority’s provision of support to families in hotels. The Education Authority provides support to families to apply for school places, school uniform funding, and free school meals in hotel accommodation. W3 participants noted that a new approach had been implemented whereby this support was now only provided when families were moved to more permanent accommodation outwith hotels or if they remained in hotel accommodation for more than four weeks. The rationale for the new approach is that placing children in school for a short period of time before they are moved to new accommodation away from the hotel was not beneficial to the welfare of children and could be seen as adding to their trauma experience. Furthermore, a lot of work is undertaken to get a child into a particular school and get a particular uniform, only for them to be moved to a completely different area shortly after. PB5 noted that according to Mears the average stay in contingency accommodation was four weeks for families: “ We understand the average is four weeks… that’s the figures we have, it’s four weeks” (PB5). PB5 described the introduction of the new policy as follows: “… the move-on rate has sped up to such a degree that most of the families are being offered addresses within four weeks of landing. We’ve said in the light of that can we develop a watch and wait for those four weeks if the family’s not moved on and there’s indications that they won’t be moving on, we will seek a school based on the hotel address at the four-week point. But for the others we engage, we meet with them, we let the families know where they are, we give them our contact details, we try and get eyes on for any children with special needs, and have still been putting children on to the SEN register to be seen by psychology where we’re picking up major concerns. And we also still inform the parent of the right to go ahead and seek school placement independently” (PB5).
Education Examples of good practice
A number of participants highlighted good practice in terms of how schools responded to the needs of asylum seeker and refugee young people, particularly in the context of limited resources. CSO6 said: “We have some very proactive schools who will use our services, who will phone constantly about any new student coming in to the classroom, just to find out about backgrounds and stuff like that. So they do do that and we’re lucky that way down here”( CSO 6). PB5 also noted that some schools had been particularly proactive and also more affected than others in terms of responding to the needs of asylum seeking and refugee children: “…it’s been the non-selective schools who have done all the heavy lifting. And obviously then you’re in areas of increased social need, and those schools under severe pressure with very little resources are the ones being asked to do the heavy lifting in this regard” (PB5). W1 and W3 participants noted that the Education Authority’s Inter-Cultural Education Service did excellent work in supporting schools and asylum seeker and refugee young people (despite concerns raised in relation to the Education Authority’s recent change of policy – see below). PB2 agreed: “… the Intercultural Education Service do a really good job in supporting people. And the Education Authority do have a specific group of people… who are human rights advocates, who have a really good value base and that just shows in everything that they do. So, I would say there’s so much good practice CSO6 noted the that increasing numbers of asylum seeker and refugee children required more resources for schools, especially in rural areas where numbers had started to increase: “We are geographically a rural area and there has been a gradual process with lots of students coming in… the schools, they need bigger budgets, they need to be looking at this… because if the students fall behind, it’s very difficult for them to catch up” (CSO 6). W3 participants said that some asylum seeker and refugee children had very clear additional needs because of trauma and conflict, but there was no additional funding to address these needs. There were also difficulties with access to psychology services due to a shortage of educational psychologists. Another resourcing issue related to the timing of the newcomer premium (provided to schools to help fund additional costs related to newcomer children, including asylum seekers and refugees). happening there” (PB2). Barriers related to resourcing
32 | Access to Public Services and Access to Justice for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Northern Ireland
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