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Councils can help refugee children if properly backed

2 mins read Editorial
The closure and destruction of the Calais "jungle" refugee camp has spared its estimated 5,000 inhabitants another freezing winter living in tents and mud.

But while most have been moved to more humane conditions in refugee centres across France, what happens to the hundreds of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who had been living in the camp is less clear. The UK government has pledged to take all the unaccompanied children from Calais, but the swift action campaigners had hoped and called for has not materialised - many children are still being housed in converted containers on the camp site.

One of the reasons for the delay is due to a shortage of places local authorities can provide to care for unaccompanied children. A lack of resources - human and financial - appears to be the root of the problem. For years, fostering organisations have warned of a shortage of 7,000 foster carers. So, it is no surprise that three-quarters of children's services departments say they are struggling to find sufficient carers to meet the recent rise in child refugee numbers, let alone the influx expected over the coming weeks.

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