11 Jun, 2026
The For Baby’s Sake Trust, June 2026
Consultation Response: Family Returns – Reforming Asylum Support and Enforcing Family Returns
Introduction
We welcome the opportunity to respond to the Home Office consultation on Family Returns: Reforming Asylum Support and Enforcing Family Returns.
As a charity that puts babies at the centre of our work, we are deeply concerned that the proposals represent a significant step backwards in protecting all babies, children, and families seeking asylum. Taken together, they risk increasing trauma, instability, and poverty at precisely the point where safety and support are most needed.
At The For Baby’s Sake Trust, we work to break cycles of violence, abuse and harm and give all babies the best start in life, by intervening early; supporting babies and their parents to build safe, nurturing relationships. From this perspective, the proposals outlined in this consultation are likely to undermine the government’s own commitment to giving babies the best start in life. The proposals risk impacting early development, disrupting attachment, and entrenching intergenerational trauma and all the harms this brings to individuals, families and society.
Placing Babies at the Centre of Policy
Babies cannot wait. Their development is rapid, cumulative, and highly sensitive to their environment. When unborn babies and infants are exposed to stress, instability, and deprivation, the impact is not temporary – it can shape their development for life. Yet across these proposals, the ‘baby blind spot’ is once again evident, with the rights and needs of babies largely invisible.
The framework for asylum support does not recognise unborn babies and babies as having distinct and intensive needs, nor does it adequately reflect the reality of pregnancy, birth, and early caregiving, and the urgent need for protection and care of all parents and care givers, babies and children. Policies are instead designed around adult assumptions, with the expectation that babies’ distinct and critical needs can be absorbed within limited household resources.
This approach is fundamentally flawed. Babies require consistent care, safety, warmth, nutrition, and responsive relationships. When these are compromised, the consequences are profound; not only for individual children, but across generations, and throughout society. If the government is serious about protecting vulnerable babies and giving all babies the best start in life, they must be explicitly recognised as a priority in policy design and implementation.
Poverty and the Reality of Caring for a Baby
The current system of asylum support does not provide sufficient resources for families to meet even the most basic needs of their babies.
The Home Office’s assessment of “essential living needs” for infants is reductive and disconnected from lived reality. It assumes that babies require fewer resources due to “economies of scale” within families. In practice, caring for a baby involves relentless, non-negotiable costs – nappies, clothing, feeding, hygiene, and healthcare – that cannot be stretched or delayed.
Research from Asylum Matters (Surviving in Poverty, 2023) found that only 10% of families receiving asylum support were able to afford the items they needed for their babies. This means that the overwhelming majority of families are forced to go without essentials, make impossible choices, or rely on informal support. For a baby, this is not simply a matter of hardship – it is a matter of development, health, and safety.
Policies that knowingly place babies into conditions of poverty, deprivation and harm are incompatible with any commitment to safeguarding or early intervention. It is unacceptable.
Early Relationships, and Institutional Harm
Pregnancy and the first years of life represent a critical window for building the foundations of healthy development. This is the time when support should be strongest.
Instead, many families seeking asylum are living in institutional accommodation that is ill-suited to the needs of pregnant women and babies. Further research by Asylum Matters (In a Place Like Prison, 2021) highlights experiences of dehumanisation, lack of privacy, and inadequate care, with women often identified by room numbers rather than name.
These environments are not neutral. They increase stress, undermine dignity, and make it harder for parents to provide the consistent, responsive care that babies need. They also exacerbate the impact of previous trauma, which many families will have already experienced.
Additionally, according to the Home Office report from 2022 ‘Domestic abuse: responding to reports of domestic abuse from asylum seekers’, “Asylum seekers who are victims of domestic abuse may be in a particularly vulnerable position, as their immigration status is uncertain whilst they are awaiting a decision on their asylum claim.” We know that pregnancy and early years are a time of increased risk for domestic abuse, and babies and children are co-victims of domestic abuse in their own right. This means that support for all victims of violence and abuse must be readily available. It is imperative that the asylum system is responsive to the threat of domestic abuse.
A trauma-informed approach would recognise pregnancy and early infancy as a period requiring increased stability, relational support, and safety – not reduced entitlement or heightened enforcement.
Use of Force and the Impact on Children
We are especially concerned by proposals allowing for the use of force against children in the context of enforced returns.
For a child, being physically restrained, separated from a caregiver, or exposed to distressing situations is not simply an operational issue; it is a profound relational and psychological shock. It can disrupt attachment, heighten fear, and create lasting emotional harm.
From a baby-centred perspective, these practices are fundamentally incompatible with safeguarding and any sense of empathy for human dignity. Children must be protected from harm, not exposed to it through policy. We are also concerned that this is a breach of human rights, child rights, and government safeguarding policy.
Government, Families, and Breaking the Cycle of Harm
Many parents in the asylum system will have experienced significant trauma, loss, and displacement. These experiences do not disappear on arrival in the UK; they shape how parents feel, relate, and cope. A trauma-informed system responds by building safety, reducing stress, and supporting family relationships. Josh MacAlister MP said that his priority is building a care system rooted in love and stability. This should be available to every baby and child in this country.
The proposals in this consultation move in the opposite direction. By increasing the risk of destitution, withdrawing support, and introducing more coercive measures, they create the very conditions in which trauma, stress and harm escalate. They destroy family life.
We know that babies who grow up in environments of chronic stress are more likely to experience difficulties later in life, including in their own relationships and parenting. In this way, harm is passed from one generation to the next. Breaking this cycle requires early, compassionate support – not policies that deepen insecurity and distress.
In a similar vein, we are concerned that the Immigration and Asylum Bill 2026 narrows access to refugee status – specifically instituting potential exclusions for prior offences. This could include young people who have been groomed, compelled, and exploited to take part in criminal behaviour for survival. This is not trauma-informed, nor does it give young people any opportunity to move away from criminality.
Disproportionate Impact and Anti-Racist Considerations
Families seeking asylum are disproportionately from racialised communities and have already faced significant structural inequalities. Policies that reduce support, increase surveillance, and introduce coercive measures risk compounding these inequalities. They contribute to a system in which some babies and children are afforded protection and stability, while others are systematically excluded from it.
An anti-racist approach requires us to recognise and actively address these disparities, ensuring that all babies and children – regardless of their immigration status – are given the opportunity to thrive, in line with the Government’s Best Start in Life Strategy released only last year.
Conclusion
The measure of any system is how it treats babies and children.
These proposals risk failing babies and children at a critical point in their lives, undermining development, disrupting relationships, and entrenching trauma and harm across generations. A different approach is both possible and necessary: one that is baby-centred, relationship-centred, trauma-informed, anti-racist, and rooted in love and stability for all babies and children.
We urge the Home Office to swiftly reconsider these proposals and to ensure that all future policy is grounded in the fundamental principle that every baby deserves safety, stability, and the opportunity to thrive.
