In 2020 the Government’s response to the Windrush Lessons Learned Review acknowledged ‘institutional failings at the heart of the Home Office’. On the frontline, Praxis has seen the human impact of these failings every day as Legal Aid cuts, hostile immigration policies and cuts to frontline services have left people without access to the advice and support they need and forced them into needless poverty and crisis.
Covid-19 has both exposed and exacerbated these issues. Increasingly, people have presented to Praxis facing destitution and homelessness, vulnerability to declining health and severe safeguarding issues, while lockdown has isolated them from the communities and networks that could help them.
Many people had been living in poverty before the pandemic started and yet received no public support because of insecure immigration status or the No Recourse to Public Funds condition on their visa. Lockdowns, loss of work, reduced access to services and the closure of community projects left people hungry and without essentials. People have struggled to meet Home Office requirements in lockdown with reduced access to advice, support, and the documents they need. Delays in decision making by the Home Office has extended periods of destitution. Digital exclusion, isolation and language barriers have intensified these issues, impacting mental health and compounding existing traumas.
In April 2020 Praxis responded quickly to Covid-19: we redesigned services to ensure we could meet changing needs while maintaining the safety of staff, service users and wider public.
We established Covid-secure protocols and undertook a digital transformation to ensure safe, remote work. At the same time, we kept our office running with a skeleton crew to send and receive key documents and respond to emergencies.
In particular…
- We adapted our advice services to be delivered remotely, providing expert immigration, housing, benefit, healthcare and welfare advice at full capacity over the phone, making arrangements for face-to-face appointments where essential for signing documents.
- Our wellbeing and resilience groups were moved online, and we doubled the number of sessions provided to meet increased need.
- We launched our training provision online, supporting local authorities, homelessness organisations, hospitals, grassroots organisations and schools to better identify and address the needs of at-risk migrants.
- We implemented new protocols within our housing projects to ensure they were Covid-19 safe and provided extra support for residents.
- We delivered vital, modified services and advice to people experiencing homelessness, supporting access to emergency accommodation, and providing immigration advice within ‘Everybody In’ hotels.
- We launched a new Covid Inclusion Project, contacting those most at risk, and conducting triage needs assessments to ensure access to food, healthcare, accommodation, guidance and support.
- We worked with partners in the sector to highlight the impact of Covid-19 on migrants at risk, and advocate for their needs.
“Everybody at Praxis is so wonderful, whatever they’ve done for me I’ll never forget it in my whole life… They have done everything they could, even if we couldn’t meet, they always tried their best to help all of us.”