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Midlands and East of England NAM Minors Segment Stakeholder Group
10th December 2008
Present
(Solihull MBC), (UKBA) (Refugee Council), (Coventry Social Services), (Staffordshire) (Refugee Council)
Apologies
Notes from last meeting
Signing page 4 of the interview record: This should only be done at the end of the interview after the applicant or his rep have had the chance to check the record.
FRE DVD - no update more info hopefully at next meeting
Monitoring service of legal provision (see attachment) JS prepared report. No striking trends, very few interviews were cancelled, all were for different, individual reasons and different firms were involved on each occasion.
User group update NW / JD awaiting court case A &M.
Withholding information - VM was chasing at last meeting but not present today. To update at next meeting
Co-ordination of interview appointments
Group expressed that they were having difficulties with interview appointments i.e. being double booked. Request made for increased flexibility from UKBA around changing IV appointments
UNHCR audit
UNHCR are quality auditing UASC cases in Midlands and East, Liverpool and two London regions. The review started in April 2008 and will run into 2009. The audit is focussing on caseowners'
Appreciation of child specific forms of persecution
Demonstration that child may have a lower threshold of fear of persecution
Appreciation that a child may manifest fear differently to an adult
Taking into account age and maturity when assessing credibility
We will await the report but a preliminary review is showing that as a region UKBA are doing well at identifying the basis of claim and assessing persecution. The auditors are looking at case files and will provide both individual and group feedback and additional training where necessary
FRE DVD
No update at present
Active Review
The policy is out and is being followed by UKBA. Cases will be looked at by the individual caseowners and co-ordinated by active review officers on each team. The AR officer is keeping a log of cases that have applied for AR and also a log of those whose leave is due to expire. The officers will send HDPL forms to the applicant, his social worker and his rep approximately 4 weeks before DL leave expires. The HDPL forms need to be returned to caseowners within the one month before leave expires. AR to be discussed further at user group. A copy of policy and HDPL form to be provided.
Paragraph taken out exemption applies - Intelligence information
East of England Letter Age Assessments
Circulated - awaiting outcome
Asylum Stats
VM off sick so no stats available but will be forwarded before next meeting if possible
Future of meetings
Discussion - decided Strategic group should continue to meet but quarterly from now on. Same with User Group. Proposed dates for future User Group meetings are from 13:00-15:00 on:
6th Feb
1st May
7th Aug
6th Nov
Next strategic group proposed for 13:30-15:30
18th Feb
Actions
JS - Difficulties with flexibility of interview dates reported: i.e. dates are set for 6 weeks after the FRE but changing these dates (if for example two interviews are booked for the same social worker on same day) is proving difficult. JS to feed back to Team Leaders.
JS - List of UASC trained caseowners to be sent again with minutes. Intel contact and HPDL form and AR policy to be provided.
JS - Update on FRE DVD to be provided at next meeting
JD - to circulate letter to attendees to be given to colleges to show that applicants have status in the UK
JS - to try to get someone from CRD to attend next meeting