Details have emerged of a training course designed to make Home Office staff behave more compassionately, revealing guidance urging immigration caseworkers to display greater empathy to avoid further “reputational damage” to the department. The Face Behind the Case training module instructs staff to refer to visa applicants and asylum seekers as “customers” and encourages Home Office staff to remember that “a human being sits behind every case file and reference number”. The course was introduced as part of the Home Office’s commitment to implement wholesale cultural reform in the wake of the Windrush scandal in which thousands of legal UK residents were misclassified as immigration offenders. All UK staff working on visas and immigration are required to complete the 55-minute online session; nearly 16,000 Home Office staff members have participated. Peppered with cheerful exclamation marks and corporate slogans, the training material encourages staff to “go the extra mile for our customers”, and states: “Putting the customer at the heart of what we do and working with them will help to increase customer cooperation which is needed to deliver a world-class immigration system!” However, frontline immigration lawyers said they had yet to see evidence that greater levels of compassion had been injected into the department, and noted that the promotion of an empathetic approach was starkly at odds with the very hostile language of the home secretary, Suella Braverman, who has described the arrival of asylum seekers in small boats as an “invasion”. The Home Office has previously refused to share details of the course, introduced in 2020, but the core teaching materials were released to the Guardian, after a freedom of information request. Officials rejected a second FoI request for the release of another new training module, also devised in the wake of the Windrush immigration scandal, aimed at teaching civil servants about Britain’s colonial and imperial past. The Face Behind the Case course notes that there is a need “to encourage both compassionate and pragmatic decision-making”. “Many decision-makers are completely isolated from the customers they service, working entirely on paper or electronic applications,” the training literature states. Staff doing the course are told that “reputational damage to the department has been substantial” as a result of revelations about the Home Office’s Windrush mistakes. The importance of taking a more compassionate approach to avoid “reputational damage” is repeated several times. “Our competence, humanity and reputation have been called into question. Work is ongoing to rectify the mistakes that have been made,” the training material states. “Increased customer satisfaction adds to improved departmental reputation and mitigates against negative publicity.” Staff working in immigration enforcement are urged to stop referring to the people they are seeking to deport as “cases” or “subjects”. “In some areas, such as enforcement, individuals may not be receiving, or asking for a service as a customer, but we should still look at how we can recognise the human face of all people who come into contact with the Home Office. This might be as simple as referring to them by their name.” Ravishaan Rahel Muthiah, the communications director of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said lawyers with the charity had yet to observe significant cultural change within the department, five years after the government promised to fix the problems which had caused the Windrush scandal.
“We have seen no progress in addressing the pervasive culture of disbelief and refusal within the Home Office. “On top of this, we have an extremely hostile government which demonises migrants and those from migrant communities and an inefficient system which leaves people in limbo for years,” he said, adding that he was uncomfortable with the use of the word “customer”. “It’s using business language for a rights issue. These aren’t people looking to purchase a service, it’s a question of survival for them and their families.” Home Office staff are invited to improve their empathy skills by imagining that the world has changed and they have been forced to flee persecution in the UK, and are seeking asylum in Iraq. “Imagine … you speak very little Arabic and can’t read it at all. Iraq asylum rules are complicated, even native Arabic speakers struggle to understand. Your legal representative seems more interested in how much you can pay them. “The decision made by the Iraqi caseworker will change your life. How are you feeling right now?” the course asks employees. There is a mandatory assessment element, testing staff on how well they have absorbed the compassion training, with a pass mark of 80%.