New arrivals

Leicester Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA). Health and social care needs of new arrivals, asylum seekers and refugees, 2016.

A migrant is someone who makes a conscious voluntary choice to leave their country of origin. Should they choose, they can safely return. Economic migrants leave their home country to seek work.

An asylum seeker is a person aged 18+ who has fled persecution and has made an asylum claim under the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, or against a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. A refugee is someone whose claim to be at risk of persecution has been accepted. A failed asylum seeker has exhausted the available legal avenues and has not met the legal criteria to become a refugee.

As with the general population, migrants and asylum seekers experience different physical health conditions. Health status may have been poor before seeking residence in the UK, especially with asylum seekers. But health status may have deteriorated following residence as it becomes subject to lifestyle experiences in the UK – including but not limited to access to health services, legal, language and communication barriers, employment and discrimination.

The following chapter further details the level of need in the population, current services in place, project service use, any service gaps and recommendations for commissioners.