Muslims overlooked with faith ‘ignored' in UK care system, warns new report
The UK's care system is facing a deepening crisis, with over 107,000 children currently in care and the number of available foster carers and adopters falling sharply.
In a landmark publication titled 'Faith, Family and the Care System: A Missed Connection?', Equi has argued that while ethnicity and culture are often factored into decisions about care placements, faith continues to be neglected, with damaging consequences for children's emotional stability and sense of identity.
Drawing on polling conducted in partnership with Savanta, as well as interviews and case studies from across the UK, the report set out the urgent need for faith-literate reform of the child welfare system.
'Faith isn't just a personal belief for many children, it's a source of identity, resilience and stability. Our care system needs to reflect that,' said Prof. Javed Khan, one of the leading voices behind the report.
The research highlighted the experiences of British Muslim communities, showing that faith can play a powerful role in supporting vulnerable children, both by helping to prevent family breakdown and by fostering strong networks of informal and kinship-based care.
Despite making up 10 percent of under-18s in England, Muslim children account for less than 5 percent of those in care. It is a disparity Equi said reflected both strong community-based care and the challenges Muslim families face in engaging with the formal care system.
According to the findings, British Muslims are 66 percent more likely than the general public to provide informal care or financial support to children at risk of entering care.
Over 5,500 Muslim heritage children are currently in formal kinship care arrangements, with thousands more supported informally, a contribution estimated to save the state more than £220 million ($298 million) each year.
This strong culture of kinship care, rooted in Islamic teachings around the responsibility to care for orphaned children ('yateem'), is seen by the report authors as an underappreciated asset within the national care framework.
However, Equi said British Muslims who want to contribute more formally to the care system face significant barriers.
While members of the community are 63 percent more likely than the general population to consider fostering or adoption, nearly 60 percent report fears of discrimination.
Many point to cultural misunderstandings, bias in assessment processes and a lack of faith-sensitive placements as major deterrents.
Faith is also closely tied to children's sense of self and well-being, the report argues.
More than 70 percent of British Muslims — and 40 percent of the wider public — said faith played a key role in shaping their identity during childhood.
Yet current government policy fails to take religious background into account during care placements, following the removal of faith matching guidance in 2014.
Equi links this omission to increased identity conflict, emotional distress and instability in care arrangements.
Young people from faith backgrounds leaving care are also highlighted as being especially vulnerable to isolation. The report calls for faith-based mentoring schemes and transitional housing to support care leavers as they navigate adulthood and reconnect with their communities.
In response to the findings, Equi called on the government to embed faith literacy throughout the care system.
Among its recommendations are recording children's faith heritage in care records, incorporating religious identity into placement decisions, offering culturally sensitive therapeutic care, and working in partnership with faith-based charities to recruit and support carers.
The report also urges local authorities to expand fostering capacity, particularly for sibling groups and multigenerational households, and to ensure clear legal and financial guidance is provided to kinship carers.
'This report isn't just about British Muslims, it's about the 40 percent of children for whom faith is part of who they are,' said Khan.
'It's not about bringing faith into policymaking in an ideological sense. But, rather, it's a wake-up call that ignoring faith ignores people's lived realities. It harms vulnerable children's sense of belonging and increases instability in care placements. The system must become more inclusive, fair and ultimately more effective.'
With rising pressure on the UK's care system and a shrinking pool of carers, Equi's report presented a timely and compelling case for unlocking underused community resources and building a more resilient, culturally competent and cost-effective model of care, it said.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Arab News
5 days ago
- Arab News
UK must bring sick, injured children from Gaza ‘without delay,' MPs say
LONDON: The British government must bring sick and injured Palestinian children from Gaza to the UK 'without delay,' a group of MPs has said. The cross-party group of 96 parliamentarians made the appeal in a letter to senior government ministers, the BBC reported. Children in the Palestinian enclave are at risk of imminent death, and any barriers preventing their evacuation to Britain must be removed, they said. Responding to Gaza's 'decimated' healthcare system requires adequate funding and a detailed timeline for child evacuations, the MPs added. UN children's charity UNICEF has said that more than 50,000 Palestinian children have been killed or injured since the beginning of the Gaza war in late 2023. The medical and humanitarian catastrophe in the enclave has reached 'horrific proportions,' said the MPs' letter, which was coordinated by Dr. Simon Opher, a Labour MP and GP. Signatories to the letter, addressing the health, home, and foreign secretaries, said they were working with Medecins sans Frontieres to expedite the evacuation of injured and ill Palestinian children to Britain. The children and their families must be allowed to claim asylum after their treatment is completed, the letter said. The UK Home Office previously said that biometric checks would be carried out before Palestinian children and their carers travel to the UK, a decision that was questioned by the letter's signatories. Plans to evacuate seriously ill or injured children from Gaza were being carried out 'at pace,' the government said earlier in August. A spokesperson said: 'We are accelerating plans to evacuate children from Gaza who require urgent medical care, including bringing them to the UK for specialist treatment where that is the best option.' Several hundred Palestinian children are expected to be evacuated as part of the scheme. Since late 2023, the UK has channeled funding toward the treatment of injured and seriously ill Palestinians in hospitals across the Middle East. Liz Harding, of MSF's UK branch, welcomed the MPs' letter and called on the government to waive its biometric visa requirement. Britain must 'urgently act on its commitment by creating a dedicated, publicly funded pathway based on clinical need, not bureaucracy,' she added.
Arab News
12-08-2025
- Arab News
Madonna urges the pope to visit Gaza ‘before it's too late'
LONDON: Madonna has urged the pope to travel to Gaza and 'bring your light to the children before it's too late.' The superstar posted her appeal to the pontiff on social media Monday, saying her son Rocco's birthday prompted her to make the post. Rocco turned 25 Monday. Addressing Pope Leo XIV, she wrote: 'Most Holy Father. Please go to Gaza and bring your light to the children before it's too late. As a mother, I cannot bear to watch their suffering. 'The children of the world belong to everyone. You are the only one of us who cannot be denied entry,' she added. 'We need the humanitarian gates to be fully opened to save these innocent children. There is no more time. Please say you will go. Love, Madonna.' The singer added that she wasn't taking sides in the war. 'I am not pointing fingers, placing blame or taking sides. Everyone is suffering. Including the mothers of the hostages,' she wrote. 'I pray that they are released as well. I am merely trying to do what I can to keep these children from dying of starvation.' The pope recently renewed his call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, asking the international community to respect humanitarian laws and the obligation to protect civilians. 'I once again call for an immediate end to the barbarity of this war and for a peaceful resolution to the conflict,' the pontiff said last month. Aid workers and doctors have said that after months of Israeli blockade and turmoil in the distribution of supplies, children in Gaza with no previous conditions are starting to die from malnutrition. Israel's air and ground offensive, sparked by Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023 attack into Israel, has displaced most of the some 2 million Palestinians in Gaza and pushed the territory toward famine. The United Nations said that across Gaza, more than 5,000 children were diagnosed with malnutrition in May, though that is likely an undercount. Malnutrition was virtually nonexistent before the war. Doctors struggle to treat the children because many supplies have run out, the UN says. Israel denies a famine is taking place or that children are starving. It says it has supplied enough food throughout the war and accuses Hamas of causing shortages by stealing aid and trying to control food distribution.
Arab News
04-08-2025
- Arab News
How the UK's ‘apartheid apologists' use ‘disingenuous' antisemitism claims to suppress Israel's critics
LONDON: In the initial weeks of the war in Gaza, Ghassan Abu-Sitta, a British-Palestinian plastic and reconstructive surgeon, worked day and night at Al-Shifa Hospital as part of a team from the medical charity Medecins sans Frontieres. During that time, Abu-Sitta regularly posted updates on X about the injuries he was treating. On returning to London, he held a press conference at which journalists were shown some of the footage he had deemed too distressing to post online. He also shared photographs of some of the children he had treated who had been left with life-changing injuries. Underscoring the scale of suffering, Abu-Sitta said he had performed six amputations on child patients in one night alone. Israel mounted its military campaign in Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, which saw 1,200 killed — the majority of them civilians — and 250 taken hostage. Twenty-two months later, Israeli operations have destroyed much of Gaza's infrastructure, created famine conditions, and left about 60,000 Palestinians dead, according to Gazan health authorities. After returning to the UK, Abu-Sitta gave evidence to London's Metropolitan Police Service, which had appealed for anyone who had been to Israel or Palestine to come forward if they had 'witnessed or been a victim of terrorism, war crimes, or crimes against humanity.' That was the cue for an organization called UK Lawyers for Israel, or UKLFI, to act. It reported Abu-Sitta to the UK health care regulator, the General Medical Council, seeking to have him suspended. At the same time, according to a new report from CAGE International exposing the activities of two influential pro-Israel lobby groups in the UK, Abu-Sitta 'became the target of an online campaign to malign his work, resulting in his entry to France, Germany, and the Netherlands being barred when invited to deliver lectures.' The GMC tribunal threw out the complaint, finding there was 'no evidence that there was any potential risk to patients … arising from the concerns about Dr. Abu-Sitta's social media posts.' It also rejected the submission that he would discriminate against Jewish or Israeli patients 'because the only evidence before the Tribunal on this point suggested the contrary — that Dr. Abu-Sitta did not discriminate against any particular group of patients.' The tribunal acknowledged 'the long history of humanitarian overseas work by Dr. Abu-Sitta,' adding 'it was not in the public interest to be deprived of a competent doctor.' But the campaign against Abu-Sitta is just one of dozens of examples of what CAGE International called a flood of 'disingenuous and dishonest complaints of antisemitism, seeking to suppress and criminalize support for Palestine in the UK,' perpetuated by UKLFI and the Campaign Against Antisemitism, or CAA. In a new report, 'Britain's Apartheid Apologists,' CAGE focuses on the organizations as just two among 'the constellation of efforts to provide cover to Zionism' which, it says, 'regularly support the apartheid state of Israel.' UKLFI is a limited company with a separate charitable wing. The CAA, a registered charity, 'ostensibly seeks to highlight acts of antisemitism in the UK, but much of its activities are geared toward reporting on those who criticize or oppose Israel.' CAGE has reported both organizations to the UK's Charity Commission for allegedly breaching the commission's code of conduct, 'which prohibits support for policies that violate fundamental human rights, and have misused their platforms to shield Israel from accountability.' Both groups, it says, 'regularly instrumentalize regulatory authorities to attack and harass those who criticize and protest against Zionist apartheid and its settler colonial and genocidal activity. 'Through the conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism, they seek to inhibit and disrupt genuine criticism of Israeli crimes under international law.' A spokesperson for the Charity Commission confirmed it had 'ongoing compliance cases into Campaign Against Antisemitism and UK Lawyers for Israel Charitable Trust. We will assess any issues raised to determine what, if any, role there is for us as regulator.' The CAGE report accuses UKLFI of 'bad-faith lawfare, opacity of finances and governance, and institutional racism.' The organization, it says, 'has become adept at weaponizing professional regulation, bombarding regulators like the General Medical Council, Solicitors' Regulation Authority, Bar Standards Board, and Charity Commission with vexatious complaints designed to harass and silence Palestinian rights advocates.' CAGE also questions the source of UKLFI's funding. 'Despite clear evidence of coordination with the Israeli state and its objectives, UKLFI continues to conceal its funding sources, refusing to disclose the financial backers driving its campaign of professional harassment.' The report labels the CAA as 'UKLFI's less respectable twin, exploiting legitimate concerns about antisemitism to silence criticism of Israel and Zionism through strategic deployment of the dysfunctional, and arguably now totally broken, IHRA working definition.' The definition of antisemitism framed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, widely adopted by global organizations, has been criticized as a shield to protect Israel. The report says the CAA's 'relentless pressure on universities, local councils, and public bodies has created a climate of fear in British public life and particularly in academia, where scholars now routinely self-censor Palestine-related research to avoid being smeared as antisemites.' Like UKLFI, 'CAA maintains close ties to both Labour and Conservative Party figures and pro-Israel lobby groups while refusing to come clean about its funding — a glaring lack of transparency for an organization that demands accountability from others.' The report includes a long list of organizations and individuals targeted by both groups, and that in many cases, 'the reactions of the organizations concerned has highlighted the pervasive fear of being labelled antisemitic.' In February 2023, UKLFI claimed Jewish patients visiting Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London had been left feeling 'vulnerable, harassed and victimized' by an exhibition of artwork made by Palestinian children in Gaza. The decorated plates, part of a collaborative project with the hospital's community school, were removed after UKLFI wrote to the hospital trust. Later, a freedom of information request by Jewish Voice for Labour found that the hospital had received no complaints from patients about the artwork. The CAA, says the report, operates in much the same way as UKLFI, 'regularly … complaining to public and private bodies with claims of antisemitism — complaints which quite frequently amount to a criticism of Israel.' This 'conflation of antisemitism with criticism of Zionism has not only produced a chilling effect on freedom of speech, but in many cases has had devastating consequences on the lives of those who have been impacted by such spurious complaints.' The CAA made unfavorable headlines in the UK in August 2024 when its chair, Gideon Falter, confronted police officers marshalling a pro-Palestine demonstration and released a video in which an officer described him as 'openly Jewish.' The meaning of the exchange became clear when an edited version of the video revealed the officer was simply trying to prevent Falter provoking marchers, for his own safety. 'The stunt,' says CAGE, was 'an attempt to bring down (Metropolitan Police chief Mark) Rowley, following his failure to rein in and/or ban the national Palestine demonstrations, as Falter and the CAA had been calling for since at least November 2023.' CAGE says the evidence in its report 'underscores the profound and systemic role played by UK Lawyers for Israel and the Campaign Against Antisemitism in perpetuating a climate of censorship and institutional complicity with Israel's apartheid regime.' London-based CAGE International was founded during Ramadan 2003 as CagePrisoners, highlighting 'the status and whereabouts of prisoners seized under the war on terror.' It describes itself as 'an independent advocacy organization that aspires to a just world.' Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, said 'there is a coordinated, long-term campaign to prevent proper and free discussion of the situation facing Palestinians so that it becomes harder to discuss and stand up for Palestinian rights, to talk about the crimes committed against them, the violations of international law, and even the genocide. 'Even carrying a Palestinian flag or expressing solidarity with Palestinians becomes subject to attack.' Groups such as UKLFI, he said, were 'trying to shut down the debate' and there were 'widespread false accusations of antisemitism, whether it's calling the UN antisemitic, the pope antisemitic, or the BBC antisemitic — that is all part of this campaign of intimidation.' It was, he added, 'thoroughly scurrilous, but it also undermines the very legitimate campaign against actual antisemitism.' Caroline Turner, director of UKLFI, told Arab News the organization received messages from 'hundreds of worried and frightened informants in many fields including education, local government, medical, legal, the arts, travel, sport and retail, who are intimidated and distressed by various antisemitic or anti-Israel actions.' UKLFI, she added, 'do not make frivolous or malicious complaints to suppress pro-Palestine voices. We believe in freedom of speech if it is lawful and avoids antisemitism and harassment. 'Unfortunately, there have been many examples of professionals who have potentially committed criminal offenses by expressing views supportive of proscribed terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, or expressed antisemitic views on social media.' The CAA did not respond to a request for comment.
