Strategic Social Justice Internship

Are the needs of British children different from those of foreign-born children?

This is one of the first lines you read when you read the judgement, which you later understand can be interpreted in numerous ways. The BCD judgement forces us to confront this unsettling question? Leading us to justify why the needs of British-Born Children are somehow more urgent, more deserving or more human than those of their foreign-born counterparts? At the heart of this case lies not only a legal question but an ethical one, a mirror held up to the state of immigration law and local authority practice in Britain today.

The High Court, drawing on the principle from Thlimmenosv Greece [2000], found that Birmingham Children’s Trust had discriminated against a claimant by failing to recognise his specific and relevant difference: he was a British child. Placed in the care of a foreign national carer with no legal status, he was left at the subsistence level support designed for asylum-seeking families £165 pounds a week rather than the £510.85 a week equivalent to foster care for a family of tha tsize. The judgment ruled that the decision from Birmingham Children’s Trust to apply the ECHR Breach cap, amounted to unlawful discrimination in this case.

But what does it mean that only when a British Child was left in destitution were the courts challenged enough to recognise the insufficiency of subsistence level support ? What does it mean that the recognition of this insufficiency has not led to further change in the treatment of Foreign Born children? Are we really content with a system that only acknowledges deprivation as a rights violation when it afflicts one of “our own,” while foreign-born children are expected to survive on the bare minimum, their welfare reduced to the avoidance of inhuman or degrading treatment? How can we extend the war on immigration to the lives of people not even old enough to understand the debate?

The outrage in this case for many is that Birmingham Children’s Trust failed to act promptly, leaving the claimant hungry and grieving, with a lower quality of life. The outrage for me is that this living situation and this outcome is entirely lawful when applied to other children? That Birmingham NRPF policy would allow this in the first instance, but also that our statutory framework permits such sharp distinctions between children who are equally vulnerable, based only on citizenship. The Children’s Act 1989 imposes a duty to promote welfare, encompassing education, play, emotional stability and growth not mere survival. As part of my internship drafted a proposal which insinuated that the protection of human rights for children in the social care system were less than satisfactory.

This proposal did not even begin to consider that for children with carers with NRPF, welfare has shrunk to a subsistence standard, permitting for the cruel and limited absolute minimum.

The High court held that the claimant in this case, could not lawfully be subjected to the deprivation he stuffed, but the deeper question remains at the back of my mind, why should a child hold a British passport for us to recognise that his rights are not being respected? It exposes the atrocious reality that our legal framework institutionalises discrimination at the most basic level.

This internship has further opened my mind to some key shortcomings in the UK’s legislation, allowing me to use my knowledge of the law in a way that is meaningful to me and to gain a deeper insight into policy influencing. I would recommend applying for the Strategic Social Justice Internship at the Central England Law Centre to anyone interested in Advocacy, Social justice, and Publiclaw.