The government is consulting on measures to overhaul Home Office and local authority support for people seeking asylum and care leavers, and to use physical force against children in immigration enforcement. We think the proposed changes will cause great harm to people and places in our local areas in the North West and will have a significant impact on our local authorities. Our general guide to the consultation can be found here. This briefing is to support local authorities to respond to the consultation by the 28th of May 2026. 

What is happening?  

The government is inviting stakeholders to respond to a consultation called Family Returns: Reforming Asylum Support and Enforcing Family Returns. There are three key pillars of these changes, which appear in two main sections. 

  • (Section 1) Making local authority support and asylum support harder to access for families who have been refused asylum;  
  • (Section 1) Removing support from some care leavers – young people who have been looked after by local authorities – on the basis of their immigration status;  
  • (Section 2) Changing rules around family removals to allow physical force to be used against children, including by officers who are not trained in working with children and who are not wearing cameras. 

Why you need to respond 

We are asking local authorities to respond to this consultation because we believe that the proposed changes will have a significant impact on our local places, on local authority resources, and on local authority autonomy over who they choose to support. If local authorities think the proposals will have an effect on their work, this is their opportunity to influence the government’s implementation of their plans. 

How you can respond 

  • The consultation closes on the 28th May 2026. 

It is possible to respond in writing over email, and not answer the Home Office’s leading questions in their online forms (which ask how to implement the proposals, rather than allow respondents to oppose them). Therefore our briefing will not go through those questions in detail. We will summarise the likely impacts of the proposals and the points that local authorities may want to raise in a written response.  

Summary of changes 

The government wants to make it harder for people without legal immigration status or who have been refused asylum to be supported, and they want it to be easier to remove them from the UK. This is regardless of whether the person is a child, has children, or is a young person who has grown up or spent time in local authority care in the UK. It is suggested that the proposals in the consultation will make it easier to do this, although there is no evidence that the proposals would meet that objective and plenty of evidence of the harms they would cause to local residents and communities. 

The measures relating to support come from legislation that was brought in through legislation in 2016 but never implemented: schedules 11 and 12 of the Immigration Act 2016. 

The plans are: 

  1. Restricting the already minimal asylum support system to make it even harder to access and removing local authority support from families 
  • Currently, families with children under 18 can remain on section 95 asylum support even if their asylum claim is refused. Adults without children whose claims are refused can apply for section 4 support. 
  • Section 4 support will no longer exist under the proposed changes and will be replaced with a more restrictive “section 95a”.  There will be no appeal process if section 95a support is refused.    
  • Families with children under the age of 18 will no longer receive section 95 support if their asylum claim or appeal is refused. They will be eligible for section 95a.    
  • Once an individual or family becomes appeal rights exhausted, their section 95 support will continue only for a “grace period”, to allow them to either leave the UK, or apply for support under section 95a.  
  • The consultation also changes local authority duties to families. It proposes that a local authority could still provide “child in need” support to families, but not for the sole reason of preventing destitution. There would be no obligation on a local authority to support a family if they are destitute because they are in the UK with no immigration status. The Home Office would set criteria for receiving local authority support, essentially making this a Home Office framework, not a framework based on the needs of children.  
  1. Overriding obligations the local authorities currently have to destitute adults, care leavers and families. 
  • Currently, young people who turn 18 having been in local authority care become care leavers, with specific support from the local authority. There is provision for local authorities to assess removing care leaver support for some young people without status in the UK through human rights assessments, but if this process is not initiated they have the same support as British care leavers. 
  • The consultation says that care leavers who have had their asylum claim refused and are now over 18 and “appeal rights exhausted” may see their care leaver status removed and be routed into the adult asylum support system. Care leavers with ongoing immigration applications, or appeals, will only be able to keep their care leaver status if they make a certain type of immigration application. 
  • The consultation also proposes removing support to access higher education for care leavers with limited leave to remain or an ongoing application for leave to remain or asylum. 
  1. Introducing policy to use physical force against children, including handcuffing them – not to promote their safety but to enforce immigration control. 
  • For “family removals” – situations where a family with children or an individual with children in their family is being removed from the UK – the government wants to start using physical force on children, which guidance currently prevents.
  • The consultation proposes a “continuum of intervention”, starting with non-physical measures and escalating to “minimal contact”, “assisted movement” including physically lifting or carrying a child, and at the highest level, handcuffing them.   
  • The consultation says that any use of force must be the minimum necessary and must be “justifiable”.  It says certain factors will be taken into account before and during enforcement action, including in a dynamic risk assessment, like details about the child and the family, but does not specify how these factors will be weighted.   

Impacts and considerations 

The result will be more people living in destitution and homelessness in our cities and towns, including children, and violence inflicted on children who are growing up here. Long-established pillars of children’s rights in the UK will be weakened or removed altogether. Local authorities looking after children and trying to support their future will find themselves unable to meaningfully do so. 

Destitution 

Increased destitution is a clear consequence of taking support away and leaving people – who have no right to work or access mainstream benefits – with no alternative.  
Restricting asylum support will have the effect of more people approaching their local authority for support in desperation. But the Home Office also wants to control how the local authority responds to these approaches, with a framework that is immigration enforcement-led rather than led by welfare or children’s rights. If local authorities are prevented from supporting people this will leave them with no safety net or route to support whatsoever.  

Families are a specific target of the consultation, but the overhaul of section 4 support – replacing it with section 95a, which has no right of appeal if refused and a time limit on when it can be applied for – will impact adults without children as well.  

The Home Office’s justification is that they want the people they are making destitute to comply with being returned to their countries of origin. But in reality many people with refused asylum claims are unable to return, including often because their countries are not deemed safe – so they will remain in the UK (for many in their local areas), long term, but destitute.  

In your response to the consultation, you may want to make clear that the proposed measures will cause increased destitution and child poverty. You may also want to consider:  

  • The impact of destitution on individuals, families and children. This may include short and long-term impacts on physical and mental health, future prospects, integration into the community, and risk of “disappearing” from the system into exploitative and dangerous situations.  
  • The likely impact on local authority resources of more people being made destitute by the asylum support system, including children. 
  • The fact that there is no evidence that destitution increases compliance with immigration enforcement, and there is evidence that enforced destitution makes it more likely that people will stop engaging with statutory and support services. 
  • The fact that local authorities should hold decisions about who they do and do not support based on their needs and rights, regardless of where they are from – this should not be dictated by the Home Office. 
  • The fact that people whose asylum claims have been refused have often been unable to access quality legal advice and representation in their claim. Similarly, people may have lost immigration status through no fault of their own due to impenetrable and expensive legal systems. Ramping up enforcement will punish people who are victims of cuts to legal aid.  

Homelessness 

Along with destitution, we anticipate that removing asylum support and local authority support from people will lead to a direct increase in homelessness. A particularly unfamiliar sight to many of us will be children forced to live on the streets. Seeing this happen because of their parents’ immigration status will be shocking. As well as visible street homelessness, families who are destitute will be forced into precarious and exploitative housing situations. Again, the Home Office proposes to limit local authorities’ ability to limit and assuage this harm.  

In your response to the consultation, you may want to make clear that the proposed measures will increase homelessness. You may also want to consider:  

  • The impact of homelessness on individuals, families and children. 
  • The likely impact on local authority resources of more people being made homeless by the asylum support system, including children. 
  • The fact that these policies will work against local commitments to reduce or end homelessness. 
  • The structures that are now in place to make sure children are not made homeless, and their importance over and above Home Office immigration enforcement. 
  • The impact of increased street homelessness and destitution on community cohesion, particularly the likelihood of increased tensions.  

Care leavers 

In our experience, care leavers with ongoing immigration issues have an increased vulnerability, and need additional support from their local authority, due to having restricted eligibility for benefits and restricted rights to work and rent.  

The stated target of these measures is care leavers who have been in the asylum system and are appeal rights exhausted. They have come to the UK alone, separated from family or bereaved, enduring violence and trauma in their home country and on arduous journeys to the UK. It is right that when here, they are looked after, with the state acting as their parent and supporting them to recover and flourish. It is unconscionable to then cut this support off when they turn 18. It goes against work done by children’s services over many years to soften the cliff edge for care experienced children. 

As well as these deeply concerning intentions, we are worried about unintended consequences to bringing the Home Office into local authority support. We support many children outside of the asylum system who turn 18 without status, often without even realising they are not British, where the local authority should have resolved their situation as a child. The Home Office consultation is not at all clear on how they will avoid these children getting caught up in the removal of support.  

In your response to the consultation it would be useful to draw on your local authority’s experiences of working with children and care leavers without immigration status. You may want to mention: 

  • That children in care and care leavers should receive equal and ongoing support from the local authority, as any other child or care leaver should. While there are ways for the local authority to assess if a care leaver is entitled to ongoing support through a human rights assessment, the discretion in these applications is left to the local authority, and should remain that way. 
  • That these young people may have had to navigate the system without representation due to the legal aid crisis. 
  • That young people left with no leaving care support are likely to become homeless and destitute, will leave education and training, and may find themselves in dangerous and exploitative situations – which may end up being more costly for the local authority in the long run. 
  • The basis of support, including the Children Act and social work values which contradict these measures. 
  • The positive impact of receiving stable, ongoing care from the local authority for children who are separated from family and have experienced trauma. 
  • The likely consequences of removing support from care leavers based on their immigration status. These may be consequences for the young person after 18, including homelessness and destitution, or consequences while they are still under 18 but are dealing with the knowledge that their support is time-limited and is likely to end.  
  • The need for clarity over how these measures may affect young people who are not in the asylum system and have other immigration issues. 

Children’s rights 

The likely impact of making children homeless and destitute has been discussed above. The section of the consultation on the use of force against children is also deeply disturbing, and worthy of local authority comment. The violence being described will happen in our local authority areas, to residents of our places and children who are growing up here. It is unclear whether these removal operations could also involve local police forces.  

In responding to proposals to use force on children, including handcuffing them, you may want to consider:  

  • Your local authority’s experience working with children who have experienced trauma and the possible detrimental effects of using force to effect immigration control. 
  • The possible community cohesion impacts of local police being involved in operations where children are handcuffed and violence used against them. 
  • Any concerns you have about this kind of use of force being carried out by people who are not trained in working with children, are not using interpreters, and are not wearing body cameras.  
  • Any experience you have of Home Office officials failing to follow their own policy, using excessive force, or not being accountable for harm. 

We hope this briefing is a helpful guide to the consultation. Please email rivka@gmiau.org if you have any questions. 

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