Young people seeking asylum can experience significant harm within both the asylum system and the child protection system, yet these systems often operate separately. This can make it difficult for practitioners to fully recognise and respond to the risks and harms young people experience in their everyday lives and communities. Current policy and practice contexts, in the UK and across Europe, make this work especially challenging.
Delphine Peace is funded by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Paul Hamlyn Foundation to explore and foreground young people’s experiences of harm and safety as they navigate asylum and safeguarding systems and how professionals can better support and safeguard them.
The Seeking Safety study is in collaboration with “Breaking the Chains”, a partnership project developed by Shpresa Programme – a user-led charity and refugee community group supporting Albanian speaking refugees and migrants – and MiCLU, the Migrant and Refugee Children’s Legal Unit at Islington Law Centre. The Breaking the Chains project provides holistic support to Albanian young people in the UK, including victims of trafficking, throughout their asylum journeys and engages them in advocacy.
Young people fleeing violence, abuse and exploitation in Albania have very little chance of securing protection at first instance when seeking asylum in the UK and are extremely vulnerable to harm in their communities.
Seeking Safety will build on learning from the Contextual Safeguarding Across Borders study (2021-2023), which piloted Contextual Safeguarding with young asylum-seekers in Germany and explored opportunities for Contextual Safeguarding with asylum-seeking and refugee young people in Europe. As part of this previous study, a special interest group was formed with key stakeholders in the UK and across Europe. This group will be expanded to share learning from the pilot in the UK and explore the transferability of this learning to other European settings.
The funding will support the project to:
- Partner with the Breaking the Chains project to design and pilot resources, in collaboration with young people and practitioners, to help practitioners better understand young people’s experiences of safety and ham and strengthen safeguarding responses
- Publish a practice toolkit
- Write a briefing exploring the opportunities for Contextual Safeguarding within the current UK safeguarding and immigration policy and practice landscape
- Convene a Special Interest Group to share learning from the pilot with professionals
- Engage with European stakeholders to explore the transferability of learning to other European contexts
- Disseminate learning and tools generated by the research to policy makers and practitioners
This project is running from September 2024 until March 2027.
For more information, please contact: delphine.peace@durham.ac.uk