Scottish Guardianship Service wins partnership award
The Scottish Guardianship Service has been recognised at the 2013 Scottish Charity Awards. It won in the partnership category for its collaboration between Aberlour and the Scottish Refugee Council, the principal partners in the guardianship pilot.
Aberlour and the Scottish Refugee Council developed the guardianship service for children and young people who arrive in Scotland alone and having to negotiate the complex asylum and immigration system without support. Guardians assist children and young people and help them navigate though the immigration and welfare process, giving them a feeling of support and empowerment while also helping them make informed decision about their future. An evaluation of the service, ‘She endures with me’, has been published recently and is available below.John Wilkes, Chief Executive of the Scottish Refugee Council said: “We are delighted to win the SCVO Partnership Award with Aberlour Childcare Trust for the Scottish Guardianship Service. Despite improvements, the asylum system is still not a child-friendly one. It can be extremely difficult for traumatised young people, who find themselves alone and feeling their way in a strange culture, to navigate its complexities and deal with a host of professionals including lawyers, Home Office officials and social workers.”
The service was established as a pilot in September 2010, originally to run for 30 months, with funding including £150,000 from the PHF Social Justice programme. The Scottish government announced earlier this year that it would be supporting the service with £200,000 for 2012/13 and agreed in principle for a further two years. This will see the service sustained beyond its initial time span and continuing to provide appropriate support for young people going through a highly challenging process. A recent debate in the Scottish Parliament further highlighted cross-party support for the pilot.
In its inquiry into the human rights of unaccompanied children and young people in the UK, published in early June, the Joint Committee on Human Rights of the UK Parliament recommended the establishment of pilot projects in England and Wales to appoint guardians for unaccompanied migrant children.
The PHF Social Justice programme has a long-standing interest in children and young people caught up in the asylum and immigration system. An early Special Initiative, the Refugee and Asylum-Seeker Fund, worked with refugee community organisations to build capacity and support practice developments to help young asylum seekers and refugees to integrate into their new communities. The programme later commissioned research on the lived experiences of young undocumented migrants in England – published as the ‘No Right to Dream’ report in 2009. This was followed by the Supported Options Initiative, which is currently working with organisations to find better ways to provide information and support to children and young people living without documentation in the UK.
The Social Justice programme also supports a range of organisations working innovatively in this area through its Open Grants scheme. Alongside its grant to SRC, it supported the Legal Services Agency in Glasgow. Working closely with the SRC, they have taken on test cases to seek improvements to some of the ways young people are dealt with in the asylum and migration system.
