This is the second bulletin of the COVID-19 Information and Data Hub which presents the impact of the crisis on people in the immigration system across the UK.
This bulletin contains the findings of 209 organisations and includes data from a Refugee Action Survey of 46 organisations, information from NACCOM on the experience of their 63 member organisations, and a Scottish Refugee Council report on the experience of their New Scots Connect network of 100 organisations.
The bulletin includes similar findings to the first, in relation to the needs of people and the challenges for organisations facing them. We asked three new questions and found that:
- The safeguarding and exploitation of children within the immigration system is a key concern, due to tech poverty (lack of data and phone/tablet), loneliness and mental health issues, and lack of financial support.
- Most organisations consider local co-ordination in response to the COVID-19 crisis to be good (65%) or excellent (14%), with some need to address service duplication and create strategic collaboration between organisations.
- Organisations are generally confident about their ability to ‘survive and thrive’ during the COVID-19 crisis (65%), yet remain anxious about their future finances’ (57%), and their capacity to house destitute clients when lockdown ends (15%).
