Rita (not her real name) remembers when it first began to unravel for her and her two children. It was December and she had an appointment with the social services team at her local London borough. She was struggling to pay for their accommodation and needed some help.
Rita arrived at the meeting and alongside the social worker, there also was an immigration officer from the Home Office, a tactic now used by some local authorities to intimidate families. These officers are highly rewarded - Freedom of Information (FOI) requests from Haringey council shared with openJustice show they are paid as much as £80,000 per year for their work. The purpose is intimidation, with a meeting about the needs of children turned into one about immigration status.
This was a threat Rita felt. She did not know her rights and after years of working in the UK, she was worried she might be separated from her children or even deported without them. Because of her immigration status, she had been classified as having no recourse to public funds, which meant she wasn’t getting any benefits. She was living in temporary accommodation and told the government officials that she needed help with her rent "otherwise I was going to get kicked out of my property and my kids were going to be homeless”. Rita tells openJustice, almost three years after the event, sitting in the living room of her home, her teenage daughter and young son watching Japanese cartoons on the sofa while we talk.
