CYP Now - Rise in child refugees sparks calls for mandatory transfer scheme

Amid a rise in unaccompanied asylum-seeking children coming to the UK, council chiefs in Kent say voluntary national support scheme has failed and call for it to be made compulsory to share pressures around the country.

The National Transfer Scheme sees councils take unaccompanied children into care. - Picture: Refugee Council

The Home Office and Department for Education are consulting on plans to make mandatory the National Transfer Scheme (NTS) for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children after local authority leaders in so-called “gateway authorities” warned the system was “failing” after a rise in numbers arriving this year.

The move follows Kent County Council declaring in August that it could no longer “safely” care for any more unaccompanied children, after accepting 450 into its care this year, with 97 of these children arriving in the first two weeks of August alone.

Kent County Council leader Roger Gough puts the influx in arrivals down to people traffickers “finding a new path across the channel using dinghies”.

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