Ten years as a Marmot city

As a Marmot city, Coventry was taking action to tackle health inequalities, by supporting families with no recourse to public funds, a group known to be facing inequalities to claim free school meals. This work supports many of the Marmot Principles. The action taken is a best practice example of how partners can work together to break down barriers and support children to access their entitlement to a free school meal and support system improvements and accessibility.

No recourse to public funds (NRPF) applies to a person who is 'subject to immigration control' in the UK and has no entitlement to welfare benefits or public housing. Public Funds include but are not limited to:

• Housing Benefit.
• Jobseeker's Allowance.
• Personal Independence Payment.
• Universal Credit.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the government temporarily lifted the restriction on families who had no recourse to public funds status receiving free school meals. This change was not widely communicated and the process by which schools and local authorities could make these claims unclear. Central England Law Centre (CELC) advocated heavily for individual families to receive these free meals and opened a continual dialogue and challenge with local authority officers and practitioners during the pandemic to ensure rights were met.

Post-pandemic these rights were permanently extended but it quickly became clear that they were widely misunderstood. CELC set about ensuring in Coventry this could be improved. Working with the Marmot Partnership we presented information about entitlement and access, but it wasn’t enough. These discussions highlighted a misunderstanding about those with no recourse to public fund condition - a group facing some of the greatest inequalities. We determined that as schools were the designated authoriser of this process, they needed specialist support.

We ran a webinar with headteachers and produced a ‘dinner plate’ themed poster to promote this entitlement. We encouraged the local authority to update its web pages and include specific instructions and later translated materials that allowed those with NRPF to understand their rights and make the correct application.

We used our partnerships to ensure everyone supporting families; social workers, migration team, early help workers, schools, community organisations, food banks, social supermarkets, and youth organisations all knew and understood this right.

Successes

This activity provided a wider lens on the inequalities facing those with NRPF in Coventry and we used a similar approach to get better access and help for families who are NRPF to the Holiday Activities Fund and highlight barriers of language.

For more information on the free school meals for families with no recourse to public funds project visit the CELC website.