Social workers join outcry over children vanishing from Home Office hotels
Published by Professional Social Work magazine, 9 February 2023
Social Workers Without Borders is urging the government to take action over hundreds of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who have gone missing from Home Office hotels.
Amid reports that children are being abducted off the street and bundled into cars, the charity, which works with asylum seekers and refugees, is one of more than 100 signatories on a letter to the Prime Minister expressing concerns about exploitation, criminalisation and trafficking.
Children’s and refugee charities are calling for the Home Office to stop using hotel accommodation, and for children to be cared for in children’s social care settings.
The letter states: “There is no legal basis for placing children in Home Office hotel accommodation and almost two years into the operation of the scheme which is both unlawful and harmful, it is no longer possible to justify the use of hotels as being ‘temporary’. It is a significant departure from the Children Act 1989 and established standards.”
More than 440 children had gone missing from hotels, half of them never found, with more than 100 children vanishing from a single Sussex accommodation.
Social Workers Without Borders says the government has been ‘consistently warned’ about safeguarding implications.
A report by Every Child Protected Against Trafficking states that between 14 July 2021 and 22 February 2022 1,251 children were placed in hotels by the Home Office. An additional 355 children were placed between February and June 2022, a total of 1,606 children.
SWWB said: “The government has knowingly placed well over a thousand children in hotels instead of ensuring they are cared for by local authority children’s services. This is an absolute failure of child protection.
“Our fear is that this is just the tip of the iceberg, as we are increasingly aware of high numbers of children being wrongly age assessed and placed in hotels that are meant only to house adults.
“It is a travesty that children under the age of ten years have been placed in these hotels and this raises serious questions about the Home Office’s judgement in relation to the rights and needs of children.
“The Home Office recently said that… children would not be protected from criminalisation if they are found to have entered the UK via an unofficial route, citing the fact that criminal responsibility in the UK is from the age of ten years.
“And now, shockingly, we have learnt that the Home Office does not even deem unaccompanied children under the age of ten years as worthy of adequate child protection.”
Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: “Government has a very clear legal duty to protect (children) but is failing to do so with the equivalent of several classrooms of children seemingly having disappeared into the clutches of those who will exploit and abuse them. This is a child protection scandal that councils, the police and ministers must urgently address to ensure every single separated child matters and is kept safe.”
Home Office minister Simon Murray said the government hoped to phase out the use of hotels “as soon as we can”.
A spokesperson for the Home Office said: “The wellbeing of children in our care is an absolute priority. Robust safeguarding procedures are in place to ensure all children and minors in care are as safe and supported as possible as we seek urgent placements with a local authority.
“In the concerning occasion when a child goes missing, local authorities work closely with agencies, including the police, to urgently establish their whereabouts. The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration in October found the young people in accommodation unanimously reported feeling safe, happy and were treated with respect.”