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This paper identifies the major relevant legislation and procedures which affect health and social care provision for asylum‐seeking children in the UK. It discusses some of the dilemmas asylum‐seeking children may experience, as well as issues that practitioners may need to consider to ensure that services are appropriate, accessible and non‐stigmatising. The paper also identifies the different ‘categories’ of asylum‐seeking children who are supported under different sections of the Children Act and how they can result in unequal levels of social care, and identifies some positive practice examples for children who have been trafficked.

Immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees living in Europe face a number of challenges in accessing or using health information and healthcare services available in their host countries. To resolve these issues and deliver the necessary services, providers must take a comprehensive approach to better understand the types of health information and healthcare services that these individuals need, seek and use. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop that comprehensive approach.

In this paper, a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed publications was performed, with 3.013 articles collected from various databases. A total of 57 qualifying papers on studies conducted in Europe were included in the review after applying the predefined inclusion and exclusion requirements, screening processes and eliminating duplicates. The information seeking and communication model (ISCM) was used in the analysis.

The findings revealed that while many health information and healthcare services are accessible in Europe for immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees, many of these individuals are unaware of their existence or how to access them. While our findings do not specify what health-related information these groups need, use or seek, they do suggest the importance and value of providing mental health, sexual health and HIV, as well as pregnancy and childbirth information and services. Furthermore, according to our results, health information services should be fact-based, easy to understand and raise awareness about healthcare structure and services available in Europe for this vulnerable population.

This study has a range of practical implications, including (1) highlighting the need for mental health and behavioural health services and (2) stressing the value of addressing cultural context and religious values while investigating (health) information seeking of people with foreign background.

This is one of the first studies to systematically review and examine the behaviour of immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees in relation to health information and healthcare services in the European context.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the world is experiencing the greatest refugee crisis in recorded history alongside increasingly restrictive limits on asylum seekers and refugees. In 2020, the US administration established a ceiling for refugees of 18,000 people, the lowest number on record, and only 11,814 refugees were admitted to the United States. The Biden administration has expressed commitments to building a coherent asylum and refugee system and quickly reversing recent detrimental policies. But the administration has cautioned how quickly change might occur, given how “agencies and processes…have been so gutted.”¹

2016 to 2020 included an overwhelming series of changes to laws and policies affecting asylum seekers, often with little documented planning or communication, wreaking severe effects on conditions for asylum seekers at the US–Mexico border. These changes had significant consequences for human rights, most notably the linchpin right of access to information. At the US–Mexico border, must the right “to seek, receive and impart information” be fulfilled in order to fulfill the right to asylum?

While information professionals are not expected to be experts in law, they are experts in understanding the link between access to information and the realization of justice and human rights. This chapter investigates the role of the information professional in the fulfillment of the right to asylum, particularly in the context of contemporary asylum seekers at the US–Mexico border, volatile information landscapes, and the legal and historical framework in the United States for seeking asylum.

Refugee and asylum-seeking women are particularly vulnerable to experiencing mental health difficulties during the perinatal period, with social factors compounding these experiences. Research is limited into the mental health needs of perinatal women who are refugees or seeking asylum. The purpose of this paper is to examine the best available international evidence on this topic and to discuss the findings with relevance to the UK context.

A modified population, intervention, comparison, outcome was used to formulate the research question and search strategy. Databases searched were: cumulative index of nursing and allied health literature, Medline, PsychINFO, Web of Science and Scopus. Guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis framework, results were screened against an inclusion and exclusion criteria. Each study underwent a quality assessment in which they were appraised using the mixed methods appraisal tool.

Eight papers were retrieved, and a thematic analysis was conducted. Two major themes were identified: mental health needs and social influences. Refugees and asylum seekers are likely to have experienced trauma as reasons for migration. Post-migration stressors, including hostility and dispersal from social networks, lead to cumulative trauma. These each add to the mental health needs of perinatal refugee and asylum-seeking women that cannot be ignored by policymakers, health and social care services or professionals.

Refugee and asylum-seeking women are particularly vulnerable to mental health difficulties in the perinatal period. Stressors accumulated pre-, during and post-migration to the host country exacerbate mental distress. In the UK, the treatment of this population may be detrimental to their mental health, prompting the need for greater critical awareness of the socioecological environment that refugee or asylum-seeking women experience.

The participatory action research project described in this chapter took place with an established campaigning and research organisation in Manchester. The young activists who were part of the work were all living without legal status in the UK, and had all been failed by the asylum system and cast as the ‘abject’ (Tyler, 2013) and unwanted. Building upon decades of protest against racist and ‘othering’ polices in Britain (Copsey, 2016; England, 2019), the project illustrates a powerful example of young people who are very much on the margins, neglected and disbelieved by the state, and vilified by wider society and deliberate distortions of what it means to ‘seek asylum’, coming together to activate and find a voice in public to call for justice and change. Utilising Voloshinov’s (1929/1986) method of ‘language creation from below’ to create a shared understanding of their experiences in the UK’s ‘hostile environment’ (Goodfellow, 2019), the young activists engaged in consciousness-raising together to explore the commonality of their lives as ‘(young) people seeking asylum’. Rejecting the dominant ideological sign of ‘asylum seeker’, they created a play, ‘Faceless’, to depict the reality of their experiences, to present a counterstatement (Voloshinov, 1929/1986), in the public sphere (Fraser, 1990), and to exercise what Castells (2015) refers to as ‘counterpower’.

This paper aims to describe the evaluation of an innovative pilot mental health service for asylum seeking mothers and their babies in their first year of life, and to highlight the challenges and possibilities when intervening with this group.

A mixed‐methods evaluation was designed based upon the participatory action research framework, viewing mothers and their infants as active participants in the research process. Evaluation comprised reflective infant‐led session evaluations, CARE Index video microanalysis, and reflective focus group discussions. CARE Index analysis was conducted by a trained Psychologist and an external coder to ensure reliability of findings. Focus group discussions were thematically analysed, and reflective infant‐led session evaluations scored for comparison.

Evaluation has highlighted the imperative of designing responsive service models able to adapt to cultural nuances and the realities of asylum seekers' lives. Qualitative data provide a rich narrative of the benefits of therapeutic interventions for this group, which are reaffirmed by CARE Index analysis and session evaluations.

As a pilot service the numbers involved in this evaluation are small. Furthermore, a paucity of measurement tools validated in languages other than English forced reliance upon self‐designed tools such as the reflective infant‐led session evaluation designed to complement a “keeping the baby in mind” ethos of the intervention. This has been complemented by CARE Index analysis and qualitative focus group discussions. The combination of measurement instruments and data analysis tools provides a comprehensive indication of the impact of this pilot intervention.

The benefits and challenges of establishing an early‐intervention therapeutic service for refugee and asylum seeking women and their infants are detailed and reflected upon. It is hoped that by chronicling the experience and findings an evidence base is being built to support development of future innovative service models.

Policy aspirations to meet the needs of refugee and asylum seeking women and their infants identify the need to provide rights‐based, humane and person‐centred services. The pilot model described here meets these aspirations and can be used as an adaptable and responsive model upon which other services can draw.

The paper provides a comprehensive service evaluation, highlighting key policy and practice implications to support the delivery of health and social care services targeting refugee and asylum seeking women and their infants.

The immigration conundrum to craft policy that ensures border security and safeguards human rights is grave and complex. Individuals fleeing religious persecution made finding refuge part of our heritage since colonial times. This American tradition has enshrined our values to the world. This essay is limited to summarizing the asylum process and recent events through the summer of 2018 which affect it. Policy changes are ongoing. The asylum process is complicated by illegal immigration. The surge in migrants arriving at and/or crossing the border has led to controversial policies over the years. Unlike those who illegally cross the border and remain unknown to law enforcement, everyone who makes an affirmative asylum claim to a United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officer, or a defensive asylum claim in immigration court, has been thoroughly vetted through identity, criminality, and terrorism background checks. Granting refuge to those fleeing persecution reaffirms the values of a country that is, as Lincoln richly stated, the last best hope of Earth. Comprehensive immigration reform is needed on many immigration issues, two of which are to ensure border security and safeguard the asylum-seeking process.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how individual legislators perceive unaccompanied minors seeking asylum, their life situation, needs and best interests.

The total number of participants were 15. Thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) was used in order to identify and analyze patterns in the interview data. The authors focused on their responses to the questions about the best interest of the child in migration policy and practice, and how this principle was related to unaccompanied children seeking asylum.

The main finding is that chronological age becomes a key sign for how legislators understand the life situation, needs and best interests of unaccompanied children. Also, the findings from this study suggest that the moralizing welfare ideology of the past is still present in political discourse and social planning, construing unaccompanied minors as an ambivalent category between civilization and savagery. The findings from this study indicate that legislators enact reforms of importance for unaccompanied children without considering them as agents of their own future, with their own motives and reasons to seek asylum.

The findings from this study indicate a need to adapt the understanding of the existing Aliens Act (SFS 2005:716) to the knowledge that unaccompanied minors need to be assessed on their own terms.

This study contributes to increasing the understanding about how the subjective values of legislators may have influenced migration reform in Sweden that can be valuable to both legal and social research, as well as policy planners.

Pre- and post-immigration trauma and stress make refugees a particularly vulnerable group in terms of mental health and well-being. The purpose of this paper is to describe a listening project undertaken in Plymouth, UK, which sought the views of 17 service users (n=12) and staff (n=5) from four local support organisations, for people with refugee and asylum seeker status and those with diverse cultural backgrounds. Aims of the project were to expand Western-centric understandings regarding beneficial support and the promotion of good mental health and well-being in this population.

Responses were subjected to thematic analysis, co-conducted with a service user. Participants were asked about their personal understandings of mental health and well-being and what supports or hinders well-being.

The findings enabled the development of a model incorporating 10 threads which support and 9 holes that can hinder well-being.

The relatively small numbers of participants compared with the numbers of asylum seekers and refugees in Plymouth may not be fully representative of the general population in Plymouth and the UK.

Despite increasing cultural diversity within the UK population, available mental health services exist mainly as developed from a Western psychological model of mental distress and treatment. This research provides services with a more informed understanding of mental health for asylum seekers and refugees. As such it is of value towards future service design in Plymouth and the UK. Findings also contributed to a successful funding bid to set up a peer-led support project in the city.