Twenty years of supporting young people in an increasingly hostile environment
Lisa Matthews, Policy & Campaigns Manager, 9th July 2024
This year, we at Young Roots are marking our 20th anniversary. We have been taking time to celebrate the achievements of the organisation over the last two decades and the young people we’ve seen grow and flourish, and we’ve also been reflecting on how much the external environment has changed over that time.
In 2004, government policies certainly didn’t make the lives of young refugees easy. A ban on working while waiting for an asylum decision had relatively recently (2002) been brought in, a policy that does a great deal of damage to mental health as well as wasting talent and potential. Harmful policies such as immigration detention were increasingly being used, and long waits for decisions were becoming commonplace, leading to the introduction of the New Asylum Model in 2007 to try and address the backlog.
Young people were experiencing social isolation, barriers to accessing education, mental health difficulties, and deep uncertainty about what would happen in their asylum cases, with just 26% of cases receiving a positive decision (a grant of protection or other leave to remain) either at the point of a Home Office decision or after an appeal in the courts. Young people accepted to be under the age of 18 were likely to receive just a limited form of leave until they were 17.5 years old. This short-term leave left many young people feeling unable to rebuild their lives and indeed creating such fear of forced removal when they turned 18 that a distressing number would disengage from services and disappear, putting them at great risk of harm and exploitation. The threat of the 2023 ‘Illegal’ Migration Act – the provisions of which make it a legal duty to remove young people when they reach 18 if they meet the Act’s criteria - revived this alarming prospect once more.
Young Roots, after beginning work in Lebanon in 2004, initiated our first London projects in 2005 to address these complex and compelling needs of young refugees – first in Barnet, and then expanding to Croydon in 2012. Today, we run activities and projects in Brent, Croydon and King’s Cross and work with young people who are located across London.
We have grown a lot since then, and our work has changed. This change has always been in response to the needs of young people – and those needs have largely been shaped by an increasingly hostile external environment.
Twenty years since our founding, we are in an almost unrecognisable policy and legal climate. Some issues remain the same – the return of an asylum backlog meaning people have been waiting months and even years for a decision on their claims; mental health needs caused by persecution and danger in home countries, treacherous migration journeys, and harmful government policies here in the UK; barriers to education; obstacles to being reunited with family members; and social isolation (something our Youthwork and Youth Welfare projects specifically address). However, the structures and systems that are supposed to alleviate these needs are crumbling after years of underfunding and neglect. The inability of statutory services to fulfil their obligations due to lack of money and staff are laid bare when new crises emerge, such as the enormous increase in homelessness among newly-granted refugees since last summer. While legal representation was variable in quality twenty years ago, today it has become almost impossible to secure legal aid (free) representation for young people to navigate a complex and hugely consequential asylum system. Separated children far, far too often find their age disbelieved by both the Home Office and local authorities – the bodies from whom they should receive support and protection.
And we are living in a time when even the fundamental right to asylum in the UK is under threat. The Nationality and Borders Act (2022), the ‘Illegal’ Migration Act (2023), and the Safety of Rwanda Act (2024) are attempts to destroy the very principle of protection and deny young people the possibility of safety, and the ability to rebuild their young lives here in the UK.
We have witnessed dramatic change over the last 20 years. As an organisation, we have expanded and evolved, we have learned from young people and from each other. We have experienced joy when the young people we support overcome serious obstacles and are able to have hopes, dreams and just be young people. But we have also seen a drastic deterioration in their rights, protection and support.
As we enter our third decade, we are committed to working with our supporters and partners across the refugee sector to bring about change, so that all young people can flourish.
We’ve produced an Impact Report reflecting on the last 20 years. Read it here.
