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Disabled refugees and asylum seekers in Britain face barriers to service provision that sometimes leave them without the necessities of life: shelter, personal care, food and social contact. Having fled persecution in their countries of origin, they can expect extreme difficulties getting their daily needs met, and receive little help from overstretched and often ill-informed service providers. Support arrangements for destitute asylum seekers fail to cater for disabled people, and hard-pressed local authority social services departments cannot obtain funding from the Home Office for assisting asylum seekers who have personal care needs.

Refugees and asylum seekers have already encountered barriers to their health and safety in their countries of origin. In recent research, Jennifer Harris and I found that almost a quarter of the disabled refugees and asylum seekers participating had undergone extreme experiences such as torture, war and impairment by hostile forces. This oppression and persecution - on grounds of religion, politics and disability - forces them to flee. Yet, once in the UK, they face further barriers to surmount if they are to access social services, the benefits system and social contact.

The research found that difficulties in obtaining shelter and food, and concerns over immigration status became refugees' main priority. Other pressing needs relating to impairments, personal care and social contact often took second place.

The picture that emerges from the research is one of poverty, inadequate and unadapted housing, failure to obtain support from social services, a lack of financial assistance with disability-related costs and extreme isolation. Disabled refugees and asylum seekers lack access to information about social services, frequently have no way of asking professionals for help and often face social isolation to an extent that their mental health is damaged.

Disabled people given emergency accommodation within the National Asylum Support Service (Nass) system for destitute asylum seekers fared poorly. Some were forced to rely upon fellow hostel residents for necessities such as food and water. The voucher system - which was in operation at the time of the fieldwork - also caused hardship. Vouchers could be exchanged only at participating stores, and when the vouchers were issued to disabled people no account was taken of the distance between these stores and their accommodation. Some had to illicitly sell their vouchers for money to obtain food and necessities at nearer shops.

We found that disabled refugees and disabled asylum seekers experience severe problems with accessing mainstream social services - despite a series of court rulings confirming that local authorities retain responsibility for addressing the needs of all disabled people, irrespective of their immigration status. These problems result in unmet personal care needs and a lack of aids and equipment. Most of those interviewed did not know their entitlements, or how to apply for or obtain a community care assessment.

Similarly, social services, even when alerted to needs for personal care services, aids and equipment, often appear to delay assessment, as they believe that, by the time the equipment is provided or the adaptation to a property made, the asylum seeking applicant will be dispersed to another local authority's area. Under these circumstances, people struggle to manage without necessary support and equipment.

The access difficulties faced by participants in the research were extreme because of communication problems between service providers. There is an acute need for improved joint working between reception assistance organisations, local authority social services departments and Nass, all of whom should be involved in providing services to disabled asylum seekers. With few exceptions, relations between these key agencies seem strained, arising from unclear policies and procedures, and a lack of named contacts equipped to handle inquiries about disabled asylum seekers. There is confusion in and across agencies about responsibilities for financing community care packages and suitable housing.

In the research, overstretched social services sometimes viewed the needs of disabled refugees and asylum seekers as less pressing than those of other disabled people in the locality, while most workers in reception assistance organisations lacked knowledge about the disability-related entitlements and needs of refugees and asylum seekers. So despite legal clarification that local authorities are responsible for assessing disabled refugees' and asylum seekers' need for services, many social services departments still do not readily acknowledge this when referrals are made by reception assistance organisations. Where some responsibility is acknowledged, the referral is likely to be passed to the asylum seekers team rather than a disability team - further reducing the likelihood that an adequate assessment of needs related to impairments will be carried out.


Service providers were critical of the government's dispersal policy and its lack of consideration of the needs of disabled people seeking asylum. The dispersal system causes severe hardship to disabled applicants, with a lack of thought given to mobility, travel arrangements to the dispersal site and personal assistance on and after arrival. In many cases, people were subjected to a rigid policy decision to disperse them, despite the fact that allowing them to stay in the South East, or join relatives elsewhere in the UK, would give them access to both linguistic support and, most pertinently, informal support with personal care. Denying the impact of these requirements increases stress upon the applicants and, ironically, increases costs to service providers since on arrival at the dispersal site the applicant has no means of informal support.

In our report, we call upon service providers to consider the needs of disabled refugees and asylum seekers rather than discounting them as "someone else's problem", and on the government to resolve financing support arrangements. We also call for training for staff in service-provider agencies regarding entitlements to service provisions. A poster of entitlements has been widely distributed, and it is hoped that this will go some way to redressing this lack of knowledge in service-provider agencies.

Against an informational vacuum, in which no official statistics about the prevalence of impairment in refugee and asylum seeking communities are available, a postal survey of some 300 refugee community groups and disabled people's organisations identified 5,312 disabled refugees or asylum seekers known to these organisations.

However, we stress the need to start collecting figures on the extent of disability and chronic illness within the refugee and asylum-seeking populations since, without accurate and detailed statistics, it is difficult to argue for targeted service provision.

The research

• The research on which this article and the full report, Disabled People in Refugee and Asylum Seeking Communities, was conducted involved a survey of disability organisations, interviews with 38 disabled refugees and asylum seekers living in England and interviews with 18 service providers.
• Interviews with refugees and asylum seekers were conducted by seven first-language interviewers who were recruited from Somali, Vietnamese, Sorani (Kurdish) and Tamil communities through media contacts and refugee community groups.

Keri Roberts is a research fellow at the University of York’s social policy research unit and co-author with Jennifer Harris - senior research fellow at the Unit - of Disabled People in Refugee and Asylum Seeking Communities, to be published by Joseph Rowntree Foundation with Policy Press on 17 September.