Three of the young people we work with have been to Parliament to highlight the risks for hundreds of refugee children who are given the wrong age by the Home Office. O, M and A are from Sudan and Eritrea, and bravely spoke out about arriving in Dover, being given the wrong age, and the risks they are still facing in adult accommodation. These teenagers arrived in the UK alone without their families. They went to Parliament last week, to highlight what’s happening to them and to hundreds of other young refugees right now. They are 16 and 17 years old but are treated as adults, not able to atte ..read more

The Refugee Council’s Head of Refugee Involvement, Yusuf Ciftci, reflects on the foundational elements of our refugee involvement strategy and the pioneer project approach.  Since I joined the Refugee Council almost a year ago, I have been fortunate to work together with dedicated staff and refugees in establishing foundations for a meaningful and purposeful approach to refugee involvement. We are on a journey to deliver a “whole organisation” approach, which is an ambitious goal that requires creating a culture of learning around involving people with lived experience.   As we ..read more

Phayza is a community advocate from Sudan. On the one-year anniversary of the war, she explains how refugees from Sudan are struggling in the UK, and why they need a fairer approach. “The war in Sudan has been going on for a year now. People in Sudan, they’ve lost everything! It’s not reported at all here, even on the news. I’m trying to raise awareness. People have been traumatised, lost everything, families from the same household are not living together as they are dispersed all over the world. This has affected their mental health. Refugees in the UK need support, people need to listen to ..read more

The Refugee Council’s Head of Refugee Involvement Yusuf Ciftci invites participation in a conference to explore lived experience leadership, collaboration and employment support in refugee voluntary sector. Effective collaboration and leadership are essential as the refugee and migrant charity sector continues to evolve, placing emphasis on lived experience. As initiatives and pathways for lived experience leadership emerge, a collective effort is needed to ensure insight and knowledge is shared and implemented effectively across the sector for a more inclusive and impactful future. According ..read more

Ramy* (name changed to protect his identity) is a Palestinian human rights advocate who is currently seeking asylum in the UK. He volunteers for the Refugee Council, providing guidance and support to others in the asylum system.   Here Ramy speaks about how Palestinians will be marking Ramadan this year and the anguish it brings for those far from home. I am in daily contact with the Palestinian community, especially the Gazan people, and I know that for all of us, Ramadan is very hard this year. In Gaza there are no mosques because nearly all have been destroyed. There is no food, so people a ..read more

One of the thirteen reports written by the independent borders inspectorate, and finally released by the Home Office on Thursday 29 February 2024, includes the appalling revelation that unaccompanied children seeking asylum were forced to play a game which involved them guessing who would be the next one to be placed in foster care. This is distressing and dystopian. In our work with refugee children, we repeatedly see how they are being failed. Hundreds of unaccompanied children missing from hotels still have not been found. Children are systematically wrongly age assessed, treated as adults ..read more

Commenting on the quarterly statistics released by the Home Office today relating to the year ending December 2023, Enver Solomon, CEO of the Refugee Council, said:   “The fact that over 60,000 people were granted asylum last year – the highest number since records began, making up two-thirds of decisions in 2023 – clearly shows that the vast majority of men, women and children coming to the UK in search of safety are refugees escaping  from countries such as Afghanistan, Syria and Iran where they face torture, persecution and death. “Despite the work to reduce the backlog, there ar ..read more

Anna and her daughters arrived in the UK on the Homes for Ukraine scheme. Two years on from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she describes her feelings, their struggle to build a new life, and how hard it has been living with so much uncertainty: “More and more people are dying. I have many more friends and acquaintances who have been killed. I find it too difficult to watch the news. We’re doing whatever we can, it just makes us crazy to watch all the news.” “I deliver ambulances to Ukraine, when I can.”   Uncertainty over the future makes daily life in the UK difficult for Anna and her ..read more

Every year we publish a report highlighting the impact of our work and how we improve the lives of refugees and people seeking asylum. Doing this annually gives us the opportunity to share our achievements and challenges but also to showcase our long-term vision, strategy and organisational ambitions. Thanks to supporters and funders, between April 2022 and March 2023 our services reached 15,851 people. This included 6,941 separated refugee children who were able to receive the support they urgently needed, and are now safer as a result. The post Our Impact Report: how we support refugees to t ..read more

A new report reveals that child refugees who come to the UK alone are facing harassment, abuse and criminalisation as a result of being wrongly treated as adults and placed in accommodation with adult strangers: Over an 18-month period, at least 1,300 children were wrongly assessed to be adults by the Home Office  In the first half of 2023, nearly 500 children were placed in adult accommodation or detention Figures were obtained through FOIs from local authorities, as the Government refuses to publish data on these children Adult settings pose significant risks to children in the asylum ..read more