They arrive on these shores, mostly by boat now – more occasionally by truck or train – having often made long, hazardous, lonely journeys lasting many months, sometimes years. Many have been physically and sexually abused or fallen into the hands of people traffickers en route. They have travelled from the war zones of Eritrea, Afghanistan, Iraq and, increasingly, from much closer to home – Albania.
The young faces that we see on the media, as they step ashore from lifeboats or from the leaky ragged inflatables that have somehow made it across the Channel, express a mix of emotions. Often deep weariness and bewilderment, but also a glimmer of hope. They have got here at last, to a safe haven, and things will be all right.
These are the kids that are known by officialdom as ‘UASCs’ – or Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children. And, of course, for many of them, things will not be all right. Not at all. After the few brief glimpses of them when they arrive, on our TV screens or in our newspapers – usually headlined with words like ‘invasion’ or ‘illegal migrants’ in the Daily Mail or The Telegraph – they disappear from public view, absorbed into a system of age assessments, processed through ‘intake units’, dispersed around the country or housed in hotels waiting to be placed with a local authority.
Many never reach that stage. A number of recent reports in the media have uncovered the shocking number who go missing. Lying at the heart of the issue is a seemingly boring, but crucial, bureaucratic detail. The government department you would expect to be overseeing the welfare of lone children arriving in the UK is the Department for Education (DfE). Specifically, the Minister for Children, Families and Wellbeing, whose brief covers vulnerable children and children in need. And yet the department where responsibility actually lies is the Home Office, whose systems have been deemed ‘not fit for purpose’. This arrangement has been criticised by David Neal, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, in his report of October 2022, and appears to be outside the provisions of the 1989 Children’s Act. According to the report, the Home Office is “effectively running unregistered children’s homes.”
Asylum-seeking children in Sussex
The decision not to pass oversight of lone refugee children to the Department for Education is an entirely political one, according to Hannah Allbrooke, deputy leader of Brighton and Hove Council and Chair of the Children, Young People, and Skills Committee, and leads to shocking situations.
Since 2021, the Home Office has opened three hotels for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in East Sussex: one in Hove and two in Eastbourne. Allbrooke describes being told by the Home Office, with less than 24 hours’ notice, that a number of children were being transferred to a hotel in Hove which was being used as an extension of the Kent intake unit. The council were horrified – there appeared to be few safeguarding arrangements in place, and it was later discovered that unqualified care assistants were being employed initially, and that DBS checks had not been carried out on all staff. This in a facility for highly vulnerable children, many of whom were already deeply traumatised by the experiences that they had lived through.
Local charities and NGOs are unable to get into the hotel to distribute clothing and food, and there are no regular inspections, as there would be if the facility came under the aegis of the DfE. As the running of all the hotels is sub-contracted to private companies, the lines of accountability are deeply opaque. Arguments rage about who has ultimate responsibility for the welfare of the children – Home Office/local authority/sub-contractors?
Daniel Sohege, Communications Officer for Love146, an NGO that campaigns against child trafficking, is adamant that responsibility needs to be taken out of the hands of the Home Office. He told me:
“This system is a rogue system. If it was under the DfE, the hotels would be subject to already established inspection routines. We only know what we do about conditions in the hotels because a whistle-blower came forward.”
By law the children should be getting an education. Daniel has no information on whether they are being provided with English or other lessons. What he does know is that many are going missing – sometimes within hours of arriving at the hotel in Hove.
Where are the children?
Allbrooke quotes a figure of 200 children unaccounted for nationally – 60 from the Hove hotel. No-one knows if the majority have travelled to find relatives in the UK or if they are being picked up by the traffickers who arranged their journey across the Channel. The suspicion is the latter – particularly for Albanian and Vietnamese children, given the highly-developed people-trafficking criminal networks in both countries. Some children, missing from hotels in Sussex, have been found as far afield as Scotland, north Wales and Manchester, often coerced into working in the drugs trade.
Local response has been strong. Brighton and Hove Council has called on the government to take part in an urgent safeguarding review and to “immediately end the unacceptable use of hotel accommodation” for USACs. Similarly, the Hummingbird Project has stated: “We have ample evidence already that the Home Office is not fit to serve as a corporate parent for young refugees.” Local MPs Caroline Lucas and Peter Kyle have made speeches in the House of Commons.
“If this was a UK boarding school and children were going missing there would be uproar”, says Sohege. “It would be the front-page story in every newspaper.”
So why isn’t it? Apart from an occasional flurry of stories in the press, national outrage is extremely muted. The general view appears to be that the kids must be all right, mustn’t they? After all, they are being put up in hotels, and if they leave of their own free will, that’s their choice. Besides which, according to Tory MP Jonathan Gullis, they shouldn’t have come here in the first place.
