The proposed study will produce the first child-centred socio-legal analysis of the Home Office National Transfer Scheme (NTS), examining how transfers affect children’s sense of belonging and stability. The impact will be to generate practice and policy recommendations for Local Authorities (LAs), the Home Office, and refugee support agencies.
The NTS, established in 2016, is a mechanism through which Local Authorities (LAs) transfer their caring responsibilities towards UASC to other LAs around the country. Despite running for 10 years, there has been little academic research into the scheme – neither the children’s experiences nor the legal and policy context. This project will address this gap in knowledge as the first in-depth academic study analysing the impact of the NTS on UASC.
This project will use a mix of qualitative methods (ethnographic fieldwork, a Young People’s Research Advisory Group (YPRAG), and semi-structured interviews with professionals involved in administering the scheme) to find out how the scheme is experienced by the children affected. Theoretical analysis of the data will be completed with a focus on the legal and policy implications of the scheme with respect to the UK state’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the European Convention on Human Rights. The overall aim requires interdisciplinary collaboration across Social Work and Law, as the project will generate data through on-the-ground research that will be analysed
using legal methodologies.