Statement on The Observer article "Revealed: scores of child asylum seekers kidnapped from Home Office hotel" January 2023
The fact that there are over 70 Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASC) unaccounted for is a colossal failure of the entire immigration system especially the Home Office and its contractors running the hotel from which these children have been taken. We dread to think where these children are and what they are going through due to the lack of care and safeguarding.
This government has a responsibility to ensure that all people seeking asylum are housed in safety and security for the duration of their asylum claims. We have seen the system failing people over and over again, not just on a national level but here in Hastings where people are routinely housed in substandard dispersal accommodation, forced to rely on charities like ours to ensure they and their children can get to school and do their homework at home as well as eat and live with some modicum of dignity.
This situation has only escalated in the last few months since the spot-booked Home Office hotels have opened in Hastings and the surrounding areas we serve. The levels of safeguarding concerns for the residents of these hotels are staggering, especially in the case of the nine children for whom we facilitated removal from the hotel in Hasting, representing over 10% of the original population placed there by the Home Office.
““We know first hand from the work we do that UASC are not a priority, so for the Home Office to throw the responsibility back to the Local Authority as if these children are some football who can be passed from one service to another with no one taking full responsibility is frankly disgusting. The Home Office needs to stop trying to score points and start taking full responsibility for the treatment of children in its care” ”
Placing children in adult hotel accommodation is particularly objectionable, but being placed in children-only facilities is clearly no safer. The Home Office statement in response to the story in the Observer stated that it was the responsibility of the local authority to safeguard children in their care. This is clearly unacceptable, and particularly egregious given the fact that children’s services across the country are overstretched due to years of underinvestment in our public services. Local Authorities, however, must also remember their duties under the Care Act and take proper responsibility for the children – and indeed all vulnerable people - in their districts. No public body should have to be reminded that safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility, yet it seems that everybody’s responsibility in this case actually means no one’s as the various services involved point fingers and blame each other.
The scale of this issue is an absolute disgrace and the Home Office and its Minister must be held accountable. The public would be rightly shocked to hear of 79 British born children in care going missing from one location, it should not be any different simply because these children are not British born.
The Refugee Buddy Project works with statutory services and our local communities to create a culture of welcome to ensure that people seeking refuge are treated with dignity and respect, and we work hard to ensure that the voices of these vulnerable people are heard. We encourage people to write to their MPs and local Councillors and demand to know what action is being taken to find these children and to prevent this situation escalating further.