Kent slams government failure to make asylum transfer scheme compulsory

The criticism comes as the council announced it is unable to safely care for any more young migrants - the second time it has had to do this in just 10 months. 

Kent has taken on responsibility for 120 unaccompanied children since the start of the year, with 50 young people arriving over the late May bank holiday alone, Kent DCS Matt Dunkley told CYP Now.

• Rise in child refugees sparks calls for mandatory transfer scheme

• Legal Update: Transferring asylum-seeking children

The council’s announcement came just 24-hours after the Home Office said it would not make it mandatory for councils to take part in the NTS scheme which is designed to place unaccompanied children at local authorities across the country.

The announcement comes following a consultation on the scheme, launched in September last year, in which a third of respondents backed turning the voluntary scheme into a mandatory one. A third of respondents did not back the measure and a third did not respond to the question, according to Dunkley.

Ministers instead announced a relaunch of the existing voluntary system to encourage more local authorities to take responsibility for unaccompanied children and funding of £20m for local authorities to support former UASC care leavers alongside additional support backdated to April 2021.

A further £6m of Department for Education funding will be distributed to 56 councils facing the biggest pressures.

Meanwhile, a pilot team of expert social workers will support local authorities throughout the UK on age assessments, the Home Office has said.

Dunkley said the Home Office “has relaunched the same scheme we saw in 2015 [when the NTS was first announced] which we know was unsuccessful then and will be unsuccessful now”.

“It might work if money was the only issue but it isn’t, in many ways it is political; some local authorities do not want to take on UASC because of political reasons. I’ve had DCS colleagues and local politicians say to me if this was mandated, it would be easier for us, because then we wouldn’t have a choice,” he added.

Last week, Kent launched legal action against the Home Office over the length of time it took to publish the results of the consultation and reforms to the NTS.

Suggesting the local authority would press ahead with a judicial review, the DCS said: "What we would be asking for in court is to see who these respondents are and how much weighting they have.

"We have been told that there was not 'significant support' for mandating the scheme but a third for, a third against and a third not responding could suggest a number of outcomes."

Dunkley praised colleagues in authorities including Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex who have “been brilliant and stepped up to provide great services for these young people”.

However, he has called on more authorities to take on “one or two” young people.

“If the numbers we are seeing coming in were split between 152 local authorities, that’s not that big an issue to solve but we have social workers with caseloads of 25 when 15 is a safe amount.

“I say directly to my DCS colleagues, can you imagine having 50 children coming into your care in a day and you have no social workers and no beds and you need to provide somewhere for them to safely quarantine because that is what we are facing,” he added.

In numbers

• 420 UASC in the care of Kent County Council

• 1,100 former UASC care leavers supported by Kent 

• 150 UASC arrived in Dover since January

• 231 is the safe limit of UASC for Kent Council according to government calculations

• 0.07 per cent of local authority caseloads should be UASC

• 25 - 28 current caseload numbers for Kent social workers 

• 65 - 75 current caseload numbers for Independent Reviewing Officers in Kent

The DCS revealed that Kent has also voluntarily secured placements for 400 UASC outside of Kent to assist in swiftly finding support for further new arrivals and passed this information the Home Office to contact the relevant local authorities.

“We are then ringing up local authorities to say we have got this placement in your area, we just need you to provide pick up and a social worker. This will cover us for the rest of the year but it is really frustrating when you get a ‘no’.

“This is not Kent’s issue to solve, it is a national issue which we should be taking responsibility for as a country,” he said.

Dunkley added that another issue facing councils is support for former UASC care leavers until aged 25 when funding for such young people ends when they turn 21.

Kent is currently supporting 1,100 UASC care leavers with this figure expected to rise by a further 150 by the end of the year, he said.

“It is very rare that a local authority will stop supporting a care leaver at 21 because they are a former UASC,” he said, “but the funding currently isn’t there.”

Kent is calling for DfE to take on responsibility for UASC from the Home Office.

“We need a child services approach rather than an immigration and asylum approach to support these young people, who have very specific needs,” Dunkley said, highlighting the increased risk of child criminal and sexual exploitation for young migrants.

“We have two conflicting pieces of legislation in the Immigration Act and the Children Act which means I have statutory duties I cannot fill by either not taking in these children or by not providing them with the expected national standards of care which they deserve.”

Kent has said it will no longer take responsibility for unaccompanied children who arrive at the port of Dover from 6pm on Monday.

Children will be taken into the care of Border Force who will secure placements for them across the country. 

Meanwhile, the Kent Refugee Action Network has backed calls for the NTS to be mandated.

Bridget Chapman, spokesperson for the charity, said: “As a country we can do better, this is a national issue which needs to be treated as one and needs to be properly funded.

“We have some incredibly inspiring young people who deserve to be treated as such with proper care and services to support them.”

The Home Office and DfE have been contacted for comment.