Late on Monday, the Home Office confirmed that the government is moving to mandate councils across the country to accept Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASC) into their care under the National Transfer Scheme (NTS). This was confirmed in a letter sent yesterday morning from Home Office Minister Kevin Foster and Children’s Minister Will Quince.
This is a very welcome development, and one which we at KCC have long argued for. The voluntary NTS set up in the summer has delivered large transfers (I believe around 600) of UASC young people to other local authorities. Nonetheless, not all authorities have taken part and recent rounds of the rota established through the new NTS have proved increasingly difficult to operate. With very large numbers of arrivals, and the consequent need for government to rely on unsustainable hotel accommodation for UASC, the case for mandation has become irresistible.
No authority with more UASC in its care than the 0.07% of the children and young people population benchmark established under the 2016 Immigration Act will be mandated to take additional UASC. This is of course the case for Kent, though we continue not only to take UASC young people into our care when we have capacity but also operate a Safe Care and Reception Service for UASC who will go on to other local authorities for their permanent placement. The mandation arrangements are said by ministers to be temporary and until the current pressures are addressed; it remains to be seen how this will work in practice, and in any case this remains a very positive decision.
I have given a number of interviews since the announcement, including on BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight on Monday evening (the report starts some 10 minutes into the broadcast).
Tonight, however, all thoughts related to channel crossings are dominated by the horrific news of the drowning of some 31 people near Calais. For this horror, there are no words.
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