EU settlement scheme: Charity helping children in care apply to stay in UK forced to stop taking cases

A charity tasked with helping EU national children in care apply for post-Brexit immigration status has been forced to stop taking on new cases because Home Office funding that was granted for this purpose is set to end in weeks.

Vulnerable children and young people may be missing out on support they need to register for EU settlement – which they must do in order to retain immigration rights – because Coram, one of the major charities providing this help, has had to stop accepting new referrals due to failure by the department to guarantee any funding beyond March 2020.

However, the support has only been guaranteed until the end of the financial year and the Home Office has announced no plans for any extension, which campaigners say risks leaving a “gap” in provision.

Speaking to the Lords EU select committee on Tuesday, Marianne Lagrue, policy manager at Coram’s migrant children’s project, said the imminent end to the Home Office funding had forced the charity to stop taking on new cases.

“As of January we had to close referrals to our project, so we’re not able to assist new vulnerable children and young people and families because we have no security of whether or not we’re going to be able to continue to do the work we’ve been funded to do so far,” Ms Lagrue said.

This is despite the fact that the charity continues to receive a “steady stream” of referrals and there appears to be a “substantial gap” in children who have applied to the settlement scheme. Just 13 per cent of applications so far having been from minors, despite the fact that they make up an estimated 20-25 per cent of EU nationals in the UK.

The Independent revealed in September that registering to the EU settlement scheme was proving to be a complex process for many vulnerable children, with some – particularly those for whom it is difficult to obtain proof of their length of residency – being wrongly denied status because the scheme was “blind” to their complex cases and failed to recognise they were eligible.

Without settled status, these children risk becoming undocumented, which would leave them unable to access state support and could make them liable to detention and deportation in the coming years.

Other charities in receipt of the Home Office funding have said they to have been forced to cut back on this service because of uncertainty around whether they will be funded to continue after March.

A letter to party leaders from the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants raising the issue at the end of last year received no response, while requests from the European Commission for confirmation from the Home Office that the funding would be extended are also said to have been unanswered.

The Home Office has previously confirmed that the current grant funding scheme was set to finish at the end of March 2020, but said the department was exploring options for the financial year of 2020-21.