👤 Ajmal Waqif, Communications Coordinator
Late last year CARAS worked with our friends at Settled to win for a member of our community, R, a single mother originally from Somalia who works but cannot afford childcare. She had repeatedly, and erroneously, been denied access to benefits via Universal Credit, which would supplement her wage and allow her to properly support her and her child. Together we gathered evidence and challenged the decision and, in December 2024, a judge ultimately ruled that R was entitled to Universal Credit.
Successive governments have put in place many conditions on the right to claim Universal Credit – conditions, rejections, sanctions – making it intentionally difficult to access the social security benefits people are entitled to, and to cut the amount of support available overall, leaving what was supposed to be a safety net “threadbare”. Unnecessary means-testing and cutting benefits are two-prongs of the austerity approach, which has virtually been the political consensus for a decade and a half, and which has harmed many communities in the UK, and especially the most vulnerable, such as our community of sanctuary seekers. More recently, the government declared a highly controversial, “immoral and devastating“, cuts to benefits intended to support people with disabilities, for which the government are facing enormous backlash.
Meanwhile, as CARAS advocates around, people awaiting an asylum decision are banned from working. The government supports them with a meagre £7 per day, intended to cover all their costs beyond housing. Receiving a decision often means ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’, as newly recognised refugees are forced to leave Home Office accommodation in a matter of weeks after getting a positive decision, without any assured housing opportunities or routes to employment. Though they may be entitled to social security benefits, without the intervention of organisations like CARAS or Settled, they are not advised and supported to complete their applications, gather evidence, and appeal decisions if it comes to it.
R, who has leave to remain, works and has the right to be paid for it, but can only do so during the school term when she doesn’t have child-care responsibilities, meaning she must fall back on social security to make ends meet. Her situation is a more drastic version of what millions of others in the UK also experience, with structurally low wages and lack of other social support meaning 38.6% of all people on Universal Credit are in-work. In deserving more from this underfunded welfare state, there is a community of interest between those who have been in this country for a long time, and recent arrivals like R. Both will benefit from a more caring and generous state and society.
Since it was elected last summer, two of the biggest disappointments in domestic politics which the Labour government has presided over has been; their failure to repeal the two-child benefit cap, and the continuation of hostile border and asylum policies. Though these two issues aren’t always connected in public discourse, the experience of the CARAS community reveals them to be closely connected. They are typical of the kind of politics that surrender to a spiral of decline, dysfunction, and inequity. They pit communities against each other. And at their core, they’re based on a fundamentally harmful and zero-sum premise – that in the sixth wealthiest country in the world, there is somehow not enough to go around for all those who are entitled to it.
That’s why we’re demanding the government fund public services, with easy and clear priorities being finally scrapping the two-child benefit cap for social security recipients and reinvesting in the NHS to bring down waiting times. These are two areas that hurt all communities and particularly ours, who face destitution and have serious mental and physical health needs – it would therefore benefit all communities if they were reformed. We strongly believe that what is good for sanctuary seekers, is good for everyone. When the most vulnerable are treated with care and dignity, it sets a more positive precedent – politically and morally – for how we treat people and are treated in turn.