Asylum seekers

As a social worker in this field you will be required to help service users gain access to accommodation, healthcare, education and employment as well as attending screening interviews and tribunals. The key issues asylum seekers face revolve around work, access to healthcare and education, and financial problems. The majority of social work involves unaccompanied children. Adults and families will usually be referred to the National Asylum Support Service (NASS) run by the Home Office. Asylum seekers are mostly referred by the police or immigration service.

Contact begins with a screening interview, where the service user’s needs are assessed and the best course of action decided upon. Unaccompanied children are placed into the care of a local authority and are not removed from the country until they are 18 years old. Some of your time will be spent in the office, but a lot of the time will be spent travelling to tribunals, visiting asylum seekers or liaising with agencies such as Connexions and the local education authority to ensure the process runs smoothly. It’s not the sort of job you can switch off from at 5.00 pm as there may be an issue to deal with outside of office hours.

Shoptalk

Service users in this area get a lot of negative media attention. For example, after the bombings of 7 July 2003, there were attacks on innocent people in Loughborough because it was reported that those involved were seeking asylum. The term ‘illegal immigrant’ is also used negatively and can affect public opinion.

Skills required

• Good communication skills and the ability to work as part of a team are vital as you need to build relationships with other agencies, such as the immigration service and the police.
• Keeping up to date with current legislation and knowing how to apply it.
• You have to be a great listener – it’s important to listen in order to give your service users a voice.

Starting out

To become a good social worker in this area, it’s important to meet your service users in order to understand their point of view. An example of this would be attending a youth club for asylum seekers. Attending assessments is also important in learning the asylum processes. New social workers will be given their own cases to deal with, but will have supervision every step of the way.

In brief

• Best bits
  Opportunities to work on a variety of cases and in a number of working environments.
• Worst bits 
  Working through legislation can feel like very hard work at times.
• Don’t bother if...
  ...you’re not interested in other races and cultures.