In the past year, the government has set out three ambitious strategies, which aim to reduce child poverty, homelessness and Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG). We welcome the commitments to lift half a million children out of poverty, halve VAWG within a decade and make homelessness rare. On the eve of this year’s Budget announcements, we have two key questions. Firstly, will the government undo any progress towards these goals by pushing ahead with its proposed immigration and asylum reforms? Secondly, will it support migrant women and specialist services with dedicated funding?

As highlighted in our recent blog series, ‘Promises vs. Policy’, migrant women and girls are missing from all three government strategies. There is no acknowledgement of their disproportionate vulnerability to poverty, homelessness or VAWG. Concrete measures to address their needs are almost completely absent. In particular, the strategies propose no reforms to a key structural barrier for migrant women: the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) condition. 

Whilst the government’s strategies skim over migrant women and girls, this is not due to a lack of available evidence. The link between immigration status and vulnerability to child poverty, homelessness and VAWG is well-established:

• Children born to migrant parents are twice as likely to experience poverty, and make up one-third of all children in poverty.¹
• A quarter of people owed a homelessness prevention or relief duty were born outside the UK.²
• Three-quarters of NRPF households spend more than a third of their income on housing.³ 
• 85% of applications to remove NRPF conditions are made by women, mostly single mothers.⁴
• Women with NRPF are three times more likely to experience domestic violence.⁵
• 28% of victims and survivors who are turned away from refuges have to sofa-surf after fleeing abuse; 9% are forced to sleep rough.⁶
• Most migrant victims and survivors are ineligible for protections like the Migrant Victims of Domestic Abuse Concession, blocking them from financial support to flee abuse. 

As the gulf between policy and reality grows, by-and-for organisations like LAWRS are left to plug these gaps with diminishing resources. Increasingly, we find ourselves pushing public services to uphold their statutory obligations. These services remain critically underfunded, causing direct harm to migrant victims and survivors. For example, Women’s Aid’s found that the majority of women supported by the 2025 No Woman Turned Away project had NRPF. Most experienced “inadequate and unsafe responses” from statutory services. Additionally, 61.5% of families with NRPF were refused support by children’s social care.⁷

Year on year, the resources available to specialist VAWG services is shrinking, whilst external factors like living costs increase the demand for support. This leaves by-and-for organisations in a deeply precarious position — we are forced to shoulder a progressively heavier burden, as the safety net which should protect victims and survivors disappears. This issue is made worse by the current commissioning model: specialist by-and-for organisations supporting Black, minoritised and migrant women are six times less likely to receive government funding⁸. As a result, many organisations operate at a significant shortfall. This situation is unsustainable.

If the government believes in lifting children out of poverty, making homelessness rare and halving VAWG within a decade, it must use its Budget to set out a safety net for the most vulnerable victims and survivors. Prioritising access to safety and justice means changing course on proposed immigration and asylum policies. We are continuing to raise urgent concerns about the Immigration and Asylum Bill, the ‘Family Returns’ proposals and the ‘Earned Settlement’ model. Each of these policies will deepen barriers to support, locking victims and survivors into long-term financial hardship whilst increasing their exposure to repeated violence, exploitation and abuse. 

Another year without sustainable investment in specialist by-and-for VAWG services means another year that victims and survivors struggle to access life-saving support. Strategies establish commitments, but budgets are where these promises are tested.  – iIt is time for the government to deliver for the sector, and for all victims and survivors of VAWG.

We call on the government to:

• Address the needs of migrant women and girls with funded support measures, as part of cross-government strategies to reduce child poverty, homelessness and VAWG.
• Publish an impact assessment which evaluates the effect of immigration and asylum proposals on cross-government strategy implementation.
• Establish ring-fenced, long-term funding for specialist by-and-for services who are currently plugging the gaps in statutory support.

References:

1. IPPR (March 2025). ‘Revealed: Nearly half of UK children with parents born abroad are in poverty’
2. Joseph Rowntree Foundation, ‘Families with no recourse to public funds are trapped in hardship.’
3. Ibid.
4. The Unity Project, Access Denied: The cost of the ‘no recourse to public funds’ policy
5. Ibid.
6. Women’s Aid. (2025). Nowhere To Turn, 2025.
7. Ibid.
8. Domestic Abuse Commissioner. (2022). A Patchwork of Provision.