Hello,
Today, we’ve launched the third film of the series, Britain’s homeless children, which focuses on the scandal that children are sleeping rough in 21st-century Britain when their parents are turned away by local authorities, often due to their immigration status.
Filmmaker Simon Rawles and I spent weeks speaking to families who were facing homelessness but were being turned away by social services. Many of these families were too scared to speak on the record about what they had been through and feared retaliation from their local authorities if they spoke about the difficulties they had endured.
We are indebted to the two families who did share their experiences on camera. One spent weeks sleeping on buses, in friends’ homes, as well as two nights in an A&E waiting room and a night in a police station, after their local authority refused to accept they were destitute. For the other family – single mother Mary and her baby – their experience of homelessness is ongoing, as they move from stranger’s home to stranger’s home to keep a roof over their heads.
Advocates suggest this homelessness is a result of the government’s “hostile environment” policy toward immigration and it can affect people with precarious immigration statuses, including asylum seekers who have had their claims rejected or have slipped through the system.
This is a heavy story, so if you need cheering up afterwards, we recommend you go back and watch (or re-watch) the second film in our series, which is about Mobin Pourbabaei, the Iranian refugee reunited with his wife after a long separation.
We are committed to investigating and reporting the highs and lows of life for refugees, asylum seekers and other new arrivals to Britain. If you have a tip for a story I’d love to hear from you – kate.lyons@guardian.co.uk
Kate Lyons
Lead reporter, The new arrivals
