Behind the October newspaper headlines discussing whether the ‘children’ being ‘let into’ the country were indeed children, or were 25year-olds, lies the need to provide safe and loving homes for the unaccompanied minors waiting to reach safety in the UK.
As tensions between opposing views in this current debate rise, there is a significant issue that is yet to be helpfully explored. There is without question a level of confusion over which people are entering the UK, about whether they have a legitimate right or whether some of them are in fact children as they claim to be.
Safe, loving homes
There is an absolute need to provide safe, loving homes for unaccompanied minors and especially those who are being reunited with their families in the UK. Denying such an opportunity would be inhumane and totally lacking in compassion or understanding for the trauma that these children have faced.
However, some concerning facts remain about the status of some who claimed to be unaccompanied minors who have been found to significantly exceed 18 years of age. If the quoted figures released by the Home Office concerning child refugees entering the UK in 2005 are to be believed, 65% were found to have given false information about their ages and were in fact adults. Figures from 2006 reveal a similar picture. Of course, the same scenario may not be taking place with the migrants arriving from Calais.
When the issue is not over a child that is clearly young, but about a person that is near adulthood, then there is a need for confidence in the age assessment system.
The reason why this is so important is the growing awareness that to place adults posing as children into care environments (usually foster care) alongside other genuinely vulnerable children and children of carers can have disastrous consequences.
This is not a new phenomenon. This difficulty of age assessment has been around for at least 20 years. What is alarming is that we are no further forward in balancing the needs of genuine unaccompanied minors with the need to be confident about who we might be placing with other vulnerable children. Not only does placing adults with children cause, in some circumstances, significant risk for those children with whom they share homes, it poses major challenges and risks for other children in the school environment. These safeguarding risks cannot be ignored.
Failing to safeguard
Whilst as a country we may rightly feel a deep sense of duty to assist children from the Calais camp and elsewhere, we are failing in our duty of care to other children who are equally vulnerable by making inappropriate placements with foster carers where the dignity, privacy and safety of vulnerable children are compromised by the presence of an adult claiming to be a child.
It is not unheard of that such situations have resulted in inappropriate behaviour and sexual assault of looked-after children by adults claiming to be unaccompanied minors.
Reality check
There are foster carers who are being pressured by local authorities into taking care of adults claiming to be children, only to find that their own children are being sexually assaulted and pupils within the schools where the adults are inappropriately placed are experiencing similar or worse abuse.
Foster Carer X said: ‘We have been bullied, intimidated, ostracised and accused of being racist by our local authority and other partner agencies for speaking out about our experience of looking after adults claiming to be unaccompanied children. We did everything we could to provide safe, secure and loving care for them. However, we discovered they were adults and that there were serious concerns about the risk they posed to other children in the house. When we attempted to speak out about it, the local authority closed ranks and seemed determined to avoid addressing the safeguarding risks until it was too late.’
By the time these adults are on the doorstep of the local children’s services team the pressure is on to find them a home to go to. Sadly, good practice and sound decision-making are not always apparent at such times. It requires the whistle to be blown for these situations to come to an end, for the sake of all genuinely vulnerable children, whether they are coming from the Calais camp or from abusive and neglectful home environments within the UK.
