Introduction

The experiences of women seeking asylum in the United Kingdom have been described by some
as similar to walking out of the frying pan into the fire. A host of asylum seekers have been
subjected to detention, rape, criminalised, persecuted, searched, watched, depressed, silenced,
left unwell, and worst of all removed (Girma et al., 2015, pp.5-23). Maya (2015) laments that
despite seven out of ten women seeking asylum in the UK having suffered from sexual
harassment, they are continuously let down by the domestic policy of the country, where they are
denied the most basic protection (Oppenheim, 2015). Sadly, the UK annual budget to tackle rape
in war zones is limited while those who get lucky to be allowed into the UK are forced to tell
their stories to male interviewers and translators whose knowledge of their trauma is limited
(Perez, 2014). It is worthwhile to note that most of those women seeking to start afresh in Britain
are subjects of rape and torture by police in their native countries. Britain policy subjects them to
24/7 watch by men of positions similar to those of their assailants to prevent them harming
themselves (Perez, 2014). Such acts contravene the United Nations Commission on Human
Rights guidelines which avoid such people from being detained (UNHCR, 2012, pp.12-19). As
such, this essay aims at evaluating the British policy framework on vulnerable people and how it
constrains the ability of social workers to offer top notch services to their subjects. These policies
will be discussed in two separate sections: general and specific policies. General policies will be
used to refer to those who are not necessarily formed to regulate the industry alone but have an
influence on the activities of the social workers while specific will refer to those legislations put
in place to regulate the said group. Finally, the discussion will be expanded to methods social
workers can use to address social inequalities in health and promote well-being.

Policy framework for vulnerable people in the UK

The UK government is usually bound by some both international and domestic laws in the
handling of people seeking asylum. Some of these statutes are Refugee or Person in Need of
International Protection (Qualification) Regulations 2006, Immigration Act 1971, European
Convention on Human Rights and the UN Refugee Convention (Congress, 2016). However, the
Home Office- responsible for handling immigration services, has been accused of contravening
the very principles of human decency in their strict guidelines on allowing asylum (Aid, 2003,
pp.133-39). The most noteworthy faults they have been tainted with are detention policy and
refusal.

Detention Policy

When asylum seekers leave their countries, they do so to escape arranged marriages, conflicts,
rape, persecution, violence, and even imprisonment. Their only concern is to find a peaceful
country where they would be treated with dignity for their allegiance. But reaching the doorsteps
of the UK does not automatically guarantee the promise perceived. A comparison done between
the support afforded to asylum seekers in the UK and the rest of Europe showed that women
seeking a refugee status in the UK were not provided with psychosocial assistance, are offered
limited information specifically for women seeking asylum; interviews are conducted by one
person but decisions are to be made by someone else; an interviewer of the same gender is not
guaranteed, and at most of the time, interviews are conducted in the presence of the children
already subjected to hostility in their motherland (Aid, 2016, pp.2-3). Women who are victims of
torture and rape are often being held in immigration detention in the country. In Yarls Wood
detention centre, women have said that their privacy is being intruded especially by male staff
(Girma et al., 2015, pp.2-3). There have also been reports of sexual assaults in the detention
centre. As such, the mental health professionals have come under increased pressure to provide
their services to those in detention centres for reasons related to their immigration status
(Brooker et al., 2016, pp.1-6). Hynes and Sales (2009) lament that such measures as detention
have been devised to discourage the number of asylum seekers in the UK (Bloch, 2013), an
assessment which Luke et al. (2015) agrees with, when comparing how the group is treated in
Germany and the Great Britain (Harding et al., 2015).

To begin with, the harsh asylum policies employed tend to project the asylum seekers as a threat
which further leads to a sense of crisis and encourages profiling by their vulnerabilities (Liebling
et al., 2015, p.3). Moreover, their social status is interfered with as the refugees are also detained
in solitary confines for protesting and being suspected of contracting communicable diseases. In
one particular case, a 33-year-old woman who was held while three months pregnant described
the detention centres as paces where human rights do not exist (Morrison, 2014). One in five
women detained with her said they tried to commit suicide while in detention while seventy
percent admitted to suffering from depression due to being violated both physically and
psychologically while in custody (Welch, 2005). As much as social workers are trying to help
those who entered the UK mentally broken, more people are suffering from depression and
PTSD in the home soil hence overwhelming the limited number of committed mental health
practitioners. Further, these actions make it difficult for social workers to access them and offer
them humanitarian aid (Girma et al., 2014, pp.8-20).

Dispersion policy and refusal

Despite the UK being a signatory of the Refugee Convention, only two percent of refugees end
up in the country. This small figure is not a coincidence but is an art that the authorities have
specialised in (Aid, 2016, pp.2-3). Despite these legal developments, women who are crossing
borders to fleeing persecution often struggle to convince authorities that they deserve protection.
Many of those who are denied their stay in the Kingdom are shipped back to their countries of
origin while others live among legal citizens with fear of being forcefully removed. They do not
get employment in the UK nor do they access social facilities due to fear of being deported
(Dorling et al., 2012). However, social workers have negotiated for those seeking asylum to be
granted free medical care at all levels. Also, in their amendment of the Immigration and Asylum
Act 1999, the legislature directed the Home Secretary to guide on the distribution of refugees in
the country once they are accepted or awaiting approval (Politowski & McGuinness, 2016).
Those areas that have been recommended are on the outside of London with cheap
accommodation facilities. Some of those areas have provided hostile environment for those in
need due to a clash of cultures (Robinson & Walshaw, 2014)However, the policy has ensured
that people have been settled in areas where there are less medical facilities to handle the
complicated issues of refugees due to health inequalities (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2012).
Emergency services have also been inaccessible to those bound by this policy without the
intervention of social workers.

When it comes to compensation, Subsistence levels for asylum seekers are set below normal
income support rates, and refugees and asylum seekers, do not get the premiums usually paid to
families with children, disabled people or older people. A study of organisations working with
refugees and asylum seekers by Penrose found that 85% of the agencies interviewed reported
that their users experienced hunger 95% said that their service users could not afford shoes or
clothes and 80% indicated that their service users were unable to maintain good health (Care,
2007). As such, social workers fail to provide good quality services such as those of specialised
care due to the high cost of mobilisation involved.

Mental Health Act

The 1983 and 2007 Mental Health Acts provide a legislative framework for the assessment and
care of people who are detained under the 1983 Mental Health Act. Asylum seekers and refugees
held under Section 3 of the 1983 Act are entitled to aftercare services under Section 117.
However, amendments made in the 2007 Act enshrined a provision for mental health advocacy
to provide an illumination to detained persons on their rights under the Act and are offered
support to participate in decisions about their care and treatment (SCIE, 2015, p.5).

Social Workers addressing social inequalities

Disadvantaged population and social groups, particularly racial and ethnic minorities and those
with limited English proficiency, systematically experience worse health and behavioural health
risks and outcomes. Their physical and mental health, as well as their general well-being, ought
to be carefully monitored. It is noteworthy that a lack of representation of women asylum seekers
or refugees in health and behavioural health continues to pull back the good intentions being
shown by the stakeholders (Williams et al., n.d., pp.3-5). Health disparities are impacted by a
constellation of social determinants including poverty, employment,

neighbourhood violence, community disorganisation, underperforming schools, trauma, racism,

discrimination, social isolation, acculturation stress, lack of health insurance and poor access to
health care. Social workers endeavour to address three main areas of concern to the vulnerable
group. One, improving the patient experience of care; two, reducing the per capita cost of
healthcare, and finally improving the health of populations (NASWS, 2016, p.9). As such, Sir
Michael Marmot noted that tackling inequality in health is an issue of social justice and is a
fundamentally a moral issue. He went further to claim that empowerment has to be central to the
procedure. This, he noted needed to be political, psychosocial, and material empowerment. This
means that people are afforded resources for health and heathy behaviours; that they are the
masters of their destinies and choices; and that they have a voice in services and policies
(Bywaters, 2009). Finally, he asserted that the basic conditions that people live in have to be
improved at every stage of their life course to ensure the inequality is dealt with efficiently. Olga
(2014) in his research of importance of the media in understanding processes of migration led to
the development and activities of the African Women Empowerment Forum (AWEF). AWEF
gives voice to the meek and empowers women asylum seekers, migrants, and refugees to take
charge of their lives (Bailey, 2014).

Effective communication can be employed to enable the right care to be provided to asylum
seekers on time. This would allow a full and thorough assessment of needs for social care as
early as possible in asylum seeking process. With proper measures, early detection of mental
illness especially post-traumatic stress disorder would be possible, which would, in turn,
alleviate the high cost of late detection. Also, an outcome focused high-quality service which is
characterised by a great understanding of the cultural context and the issues pre and post arrival
to respond appropriately to the humongous needs of asylum seekers (Wheeler & Hogg, 2010,
pp.302-10). In addition, working with community organisations whose speciality is well heralded
can be an added advantage. These teams knowledge and experience can be harnessed to provide
services to those seeking refuge in the UK. Other measures that can be lethal are such as the
commissioning of community and voluntary sector organisations to deliver the desired care. In
so doing, services would be delocalised to reach those who are subjects to dispersion policy. As
such, a stable workforce is likely to be developed to continue training new volunteers to the
programme (SCIE, 2015).

Conclusion

In conclusion, asylum seekers coming to the UK are faced with numerous challenges, more than
in other European countries. With an estimated acceptance rate of only one percent of the gobal
refugees, the Great Britain has been shrewd in its dealing with immigrants in general. The
constraining factor has been and remains the domestic policy eployed to discourage people from
attemping living in Britain, some which have been termed as intimidating and aimed at rejecting
any prospect of settling in. many asylum seekers have been detained or refused, while those who
have been lucky to escape are living in Britain with the fear of being deported to the countries
they fled due to legitimate reasons.
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