Unaccompanied children are being unlawfully excluded from the care of local authorities
Over 70 organisations and individuals added their signatures to a letter published last week by the children's rights organisation ECPAT UK calling on the Home Office to stop placing unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in hotels.
It follows the publication of ECPAT UK's recent report Outside the frame: Unaccompanied children denied care and protection, which you can read here.
The report raised the alarm on the scale of child asylum seekers going missing after being placed in hotels.
ECPAT UK explained: "Since the summer of 2020, unaccompanied children arriving in England have had their rights systematically breached and have been denied the protections they should be afforded under the Children Act 1989. They have not had their needs assessed and have been unlawfully excluded from and denied the care of local authorities for unlimited periods of time, and instead are being placed directly by the Home Secretary in Home Office-sourced hotels. Many children have gone missing as a result of this policy."
With the assistance of the Helen Bamber Foundation and the child's' rights group Article 39, ECPAT UK issued a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the Home Office on the 31st March 2022 to obtain data on the number of unaccompanied children seeking asylum placed in hotel accommodation between June 2021 and March 2022.
The FOI request also sought data on the number of children who have gone missing from Home Office commissioned hotel accommodation (and outside of the care of local authority children's services) in the same period.
ECPAT UK said the response to its FOI request revealed that 45 children had gone missing in the 10-month period, an average of four to five children per month or one per week. In the month of November 2021, 14 children were recorded missing.
The children's rights organisation added that it had received reports of Albanian boys aged as young as 11 or 12 going missing from hotels, with one report of a child jumping out of the window.
ECPAT UK stated: "Based on the information available, ECPAT UK can only conclude that this is a very serious child protection emergency which needs urgent attention. It is happening whilst existing legal safeguards for looked after children, unaccompanied children and child victims of trafficking are being eroded. A year has now passed since we and over 65 other charities raised the red flag about the practice of placing unaccompanied children in hotels with the Education Secretary and still this unlawful practice continues, leaving children at significant risk of harm."
The report notes that responses to Parliamentary Questions by the Immigration Minister indicate that 1,606 children who arrived alone in England between July 2021 and June 2022 were placed in hotel accommodation by the Home Office rather than in the care of local authorities.
ECPAT UK added that the Home Office is in breach of its obligations under Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 by continuing to place children in hotels.
In the joint letter published last week, ECPAT UK and the other signatories said: "Our concern for these children cannot be overstated. Already vulnerable, separated and traumatised, isolated from family support networks, they are at greatest risk of going missing and of exploitation and trafficking. Some may have already been trafficked and are at significant risk of being re-trafficked. They need - and are entitled to - care in supportive foster or residential homes, with skilled professionals to help them recover in safety."
The letter says action is urgently needed and the use of hotel accommodation must cease.
Chloë Darlington from Children England said: "Reading ECPAT UK's latest figures on how many children have been placed in hotel accommodation instead of the care any unaccompanied child has the right to – and how many have gone missing from that accommodation – was truly chilling. This supposedly temporary Home Office policy has become a shadow system that sets a dangerous precedent, where some children are entitled to care and some children are not, based on where they've come from. The breadth of support for our statement of concern should remind the government that children are children first, and the care system and legal protections like the Children Act 1989 are there for every child – not only those born in the UK."
In response to ECPAT UK's report, a spokesperson for the Home Office told The Independent: "Due to the ongoing and significant surge in arrivals of migrants using dangerous and unsafe methods to enter the UK, we are facing unprecedented levels of demand on hotel accommodation for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. Any child going missing is extremely serious, which is why we work closely with local authorities and the police to operate robust missing persons protocols to ensure their whereabouts are known and that they are safe. We work to ensure vulnerable children are provided with appropriate placements for their needs."