Reforms to ensure councils ‘share the load’ on child asylum seekers welcomed - but do they go far enough?

Asylum-seeking children need to be equally spread across the country, but their needs should be at the centre of any changes, writes May Bulman

The National Transfer Scheme will adopt a ‘rota’ system, with an additional £20m in funding granted across local authorities that take unaccompanied child asylum seekers, ministers say (Getty)

The government has announced highly anticipated changes to its system for distributing asylum-seeking children and young people across the UK, following much furore over its failure to ensure numbers are equally spread across the country.

The National Transfer Scheme, which was launched in 2016, will adopt a “rota” system, with an additional £20m in funding granted across local authorities that take unaccompanied child asylum seekers, according to the Home Office and the Department for Education.

It comes days after Kent County Council warned that it was at “breaking point” for the second time in less than a year due to the volume of children it has taken in after they have arrived on British shores after crossing the Channel.

In an unprecedented move, the council issued legal proceedings against the home secretary Priti Patel over the situation, urging her to use existing powers to direct local authorities other than Kent to receive their fair share of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.

Kent County Council said 242 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children had arrived on its shores by boat in the first six months of 2021 – an increase of 60 compared with the same period during 2020.

But just 52 have moved on to other local authorities this year under the National Transfer Scheme, leaving Kent with “nearly double” the number of children in care deemed safe by the government.

This is not a new issue. There were stark warnings about the situation in October 2020, when it emerged that unaccompanied children were being forced to wait for days in a holding unit without access to beds or showers after Kent County Council refused to take in anymore.

At the time, the Home Office claimed the children were being allocated to other local authorities across the country, but campaigners – including the Children’s Commissioner – said this process was plagued by lengthy delays and that the scheme was in need of urgent reform.

And there were concerns even before this, with the immigration watchdog warning in 2018 that children were going missing due to increasing delays to being allocated to a local authority.

The new reforms are cautiously welcomed by campaigners. There is hope that the new funding will encourage more local authorities to volunteer to take in asylum-seeking children and that the rota system will help to reduce delays in placing children into areas.

But there is also concern that there is more focus on “sharing the load” in the words of Ms Patel – than ensuring each child is adequately supported.

While ministers mention that there will be more support for asylum-seeking care leavers and that “expert social workers” will be commissioned to support children, there is little detail on plans to tackle the existing barriers around young asylum seekers being able to access the specialist services they need to recover and rebuild their lives.

Of course there needs to be an effort to “share the load” and prevent councils like Kent being pushed to “breaking point”, but also that adequate attention is placed on these vulnerable children and young people’s needs.