CYP Now - Vulnerable, alone and in need of our protection

We are all aware of how difficult it is to navigate the systems of another country - you only have to go on holiday and lose your purse to know this. Even getting to the nearest police station and reporting the loss can be difficult, never mind finding an overall solution to the problem. Can you imagine then how an 11-year-old child arriving into the UK alone might feel? Or how a 17-year-old feels when they have no "official papers"? What if English isn't your first language and you don't understand what you are being asked at all?

Hundreds of "separated" children and young people arrive into the UK alone every year. A "separated child" can be an asylum seeker arriving without the support of their parent or carer, a migrant child arriving alone or a child who may have been trafficked.

As they arrive, they are in our care and we must protect them. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has stated that these children need a knowledgeable and skilled "guardian" who can support them on their journey through the maze of bureaucracy they inevitably find themselves in. To date, Scotland is the only nation in the UK to have established a stand-alone service for separated children, and the UK government has recently announced pilot guardianship schemes in England.

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