This includes improving access to children and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) support due to the emotional wellbeing issues experienced by this group of children.
“These children and young people have already experienced great suffering and hardship and so it is vital that they and their families are supported properly and with decency when they arrive in the UK,” said NASUWT general secretary Patrick Roach.
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Questions on revamped national child asylum transfer scheme
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Legal Update: Care and immigration status
“Changing the lives of refugee and asylum seeker children begins with education, and we want every school to be funded and supported to deliver the very best support that all children and young people need to realise their full potential.”
He added: “Teachers have a vital role to play in ensuring that young refugees and asylum seekers are welcomed and integrated into their communities.”
A motion calling for greater support to help young refugees was agreed at the union’s annual conference in Glasgow this week.
The union is to campaign for “a significant increase in funding” for extra support. It also wants to see more ‘refugee welcome schools’, which is an accreditation scheme set up by the union in partnership with Citizens UK.
Earlier this month former children’s minister Tim Loughton called on the government to overhaul funding for councils to support unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.
He wants to see the compulsory National Transfer Scheme, which has been created to disperse unaccompanied children fairly across all council areas, scrapped.
He is concerned that under the scheme common entry point areas for refugees such as Kent and Croydon are still facing unfair pressures.
“We've got to have a properly functioning sustainable dispersal system so everybody is funded to take on their fair share of migrants coming here,” he told CYP Now.
