Background

Central is one of 11 partners contributing resources and skills to deliver ‘MiFriendly Cities’ – a West Midlands project aimed at supporting migrant integration across , and Wolverhampton, and empowering migrants who have ideas and activities that support their local community.

CELC has a specific remit to support families and individuals from migrant backgrounds with legal advice to help ascertain and gain legal status, citizenship, and support entitlements, primarily via ‘Legal Health Checks’ and materials aimed at raising awareness of their services and providing practical advice and support. This leads to help with fee waivers for those eligible, legal status applications, accommodation, and benefit applications.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, one way CELC was raising awareness of its services was by going into schools to present to parents and staff about their services and the benefits to those they support. These had to stop when coronavirus lockdown measures were put in place and schools closed.

Re-engaging with Schools

With in-school presentations no longer possible, CELC took the initiative and via the City Councils participating in MiFriendly Cities, were able to contact leaders of over 500 schools across the West Midlands, to share more information about the support CELC could provide. This became even more critical as coronavirus measures impacted on many aspects of the lives of migrants in our region, not just across rights to public funds, and employment issues for key-workers, but the impact on people’s economic circumstances and home life due to lockdown.

In response, CELC produced special COVID-19 information packs aiming to share the issues and nuances of lockdown measures and ongoing legal processes, and explain the rights and benefits families and individuals could be entitled to.

The Weekly Information Pack - extract

The Response

Responses from schools have been encouraging, with heads of pastoral care sensing the potential of CELC intervention and support for some of their pupils and their families. Schools passed on CELC’s information and contact details to parents they felt would benefit the most and CELC were delighted that parents got in touch to find out more, and complete legal health checks with Bal Hayre from CELC, either online or over the telephone. So far, these information packs have led to 64 legal health checks being completed, and now larger schools who have heard about CELC’s services and referring families directly.

Due to Coronavirus, Bal and the team at CELC knew that they might come across more complex issues when dealing with the families that got in touch. To ensure they captured a wider understanding of the families involved and how they had been impacted by the lockdown, CELC expanded their legal health check form to include more questions and the chance for participants to share more of their unique circumstances.

To help reassure and settle interviewees going through this process, above all Bal wanted to ensure he put families at ease.

‘I wanted to ensure the atmosphere of the remote Health Check was as warm and welcoming as the face to face sessions we were doing before lockdown, so I made sure we were available outside working hours, in the evenings, when clients could focus on the questions and information we needed to help them. We also reassured families that they were dealing with professional services and should expect to be kept informed of progress with applications throughout, that clients would see every submission made on their behalf, and that they would feel fully involved in the process.’

‘We used Skype and WhatsApp calls mostly, because clients liked to see who they were dealing with and put a friendly face to a name’.

How CELC has helped

With a growing need for their services, CELC has been able to help individuals and families in all sorts of ways, some of them unexpected.

Since the MiFriendly Cities project started, CELC have managed to hold over 200 Legal Health Checks touching thousands of lives, produced extensive information explaining the rights migrants have to services and support, and contacted hundreds of schools and their pupils’ families.

One individual was using the Health Check to discuss a change to her access to Public Funds conditions, and when Bal was able to run through all the questions about her circumstances it was clear CELC could help this mother of four with much more. This led to successful applications for citizenship for two of her children and other activity that is still work in progress.

Another family who had commissioned a lawyer in their previous home country to help them with legal status applications in the UK, were horrified to learn, through CELC enquiries, that their lawyer had not lifted a finger to progress their application, despite the thousands of pounds in fees that they had paid out to the law firm. CELC was able to prove that no applications had been started and milestones like biometrics submissions were missing. They exposed this situation and subsequently the law firm paid back £8,000 to the family, who could then restart the application process with CELC support.

“(CELC’s) advice has truly supported many of our parents who may feel fearful/scared due to their present statuses… we really need this level of intense support to continue as it has been especially valuable during this current pandemic” - St Elizabeth's Catholic Primary, Coventry

Bal finds the work incredibly demanding and rewarding.

‘I’ve recently received three cards from clients thanking me and CELC for the support we have been able to provide them, under the MiFriendly Cities project. Without this support families are often in the dark and can struggle to successfully tackle the processes, costs and administration involved. We can explain legal rights and processes clearly and hand hold people through it.’

During lockdown, CELC has found the response of the Home Office especially efficient, with access to public funds applications and fee-waivers being processed more quickly than ever, perhaps as case workers focus on single cases more effectively while working from home. Even immigration application decisions are being completed in 8-12 weeks, much quicker than usual.

Bal would like to think it is all part of the wider community pulling together in a time of crisis. It is also due to the time, effort, and personal commitment he, Elliot (his MiFC CELC colleague) and the rest of the CELC team and supporting partners put in.

What Next?

At the start of the pandemic, CELC put the creation of online resources about ‘pathways to citizenship’ for schools on hold to provide more support for migrants facing more pressing day to day issues. With that initial wave of support delivered, CELC has now been able to create a new Citizenship presentation, which will be distributed to schools in the West Midlands and forwarded on to parents as appropriate.

To help share this resource, CELC are partnering with Birmingham City Council, on the 15th October, to hold a live MiFriendly Cities Webinar called 'Pathways to Citizenship for young people'. It will bring together school staff, social workers, youth workers, educators and third sector organisations, to share more information about their services, and how CELC can help with legal advice and guidance. CELC have also joined up with another MiFC social innovator, Ake, who runs an organisation called ‘Migrants at Work’, which deals with the impact of immigration law on migrant workers’ rights. ‘Migrants at Work’ offers free legal advice on employment rights to migrants. In order to achieve these objectives, Ake established an outreach Social Innovation project supported by MiFC called ‘WINK’ (what I need to know) in order to teach labour rights at the intersect between immigration and employment law to empower migrants in the community. The aim was to help migrants identify the signs of labour exploitation and challenge poor employment practices.

Ake has been running a weekly online surgery where Bal has been attending and providing advice, whilst discussing relevant immigration laws as well as speaking with participants on an individual basis. The aim behind this surgery is to help individuals who encounter issues related to their right to work, their immigration status and benefits. They have been particularly busy over lockdown as employers furlough staff and ask other key workers to work in testing circumstances.

How could you help?

As the MiFC project draws to completion (it is due to end in May 2021), CELC hope to find new ways to reach out to the migrant community and offer their services. If you can lend support please contact the new MiFC Legacy Officer, Ros Johnson, on [email protected]. Or contact Elliot Randle directly on [email protected].

About MiFriendly Cities

MiFriendly Cities is a project in the West Midlands supporting and empowering migrants across communities. It is delivered by three city councils and 8 other Partners from the charity and private sector. A migration-friendly city is one in which the social, civic, and economic contributions of refugees and migrants are unlocked and embraced. Across our incubator sites in Wolverhampton, Birmingham, and Coventry, the MiFriendly Cities project aims to achieve this with activities and training in employability and social enterprise, active citizenship, narrative and storytelling. We are funded by Urban Innovative Actions (UIA/EU).

About Central England Law Centre

The Central England Law Centre is the largest Law Centre in the UK. It provides specialist legal advice to people across Central England, and has a vision of a society where people’s rights are upheld, their needs met, and they are enabled to thrive.

CELC provides free specialist legal advice to those most in need and use legal processes to fight social exclusion. CELC advocate for people, challenge unfair decisions, take cases to the highest courts and work in partnerships with other support services.