Councils will have doubtless anticipated a number of challenges when they volunteered to care for several hundred unaccompanied child refugees from the Calais refugee camp – but not that they’d face rising charges from some independent fostering agencies on the cost of placements.
According to Dave Hill, president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS), the influx of lone children brought to the UK since the Calais refugee camp was dismantled in October has led to a shortage of available placements. As a result, local authorities struggling to find scarce placements have seen charges increase significantly.
Typically, Hill explains, his council, Essex, has been able to buy supported lodgings placements for older looked-after children (who tend to be over-16) at a cost of around £250-£400 per week. Recently however, certain independent foster care agencies have been charging councils between £800 and £1,000 a week.
“I think it’s completely outrageous,” says Hill.
This unexpected financial pressure puts extra strain on councils that have already told government that funding for the national transfer scheme for unaccompanied children comes nowhere near meeting their actual costs. And it compounds their difficulties at a time when the need to find homes for children whose ages range from under 10 (Hill says the youngest unaccompanied child identified in the Calais camp was just six) up to 17, is posing an extraordinary challenge for child protection social workers across the country.
Latest figures show that more than 70,000 children are already in care across the UK, the highest number since 1985, which means councils are embroiled in a never-ending search for sufficient placements to meet existing demand.
Around 320 unaccompanied children arrived in the initial period after the Calais refugee camp was torn down and charities estimate that dozens more have been transferred from France in the past two weeks. The Home Office has confirmed that more than 750 unaccompanied minors have arrived to date. Local authorities are now pleading for new foster carers to come forward: one city, Bristol, is holding public meetings in a bid to inform local residents of the children’s needs and encourage people to sign up.
Under the national transfer scheme, by which councils inform the Home Office how many unaccompanied children they are willing to take, Bristol is supporting 54 children, including three who recently arrived under the Dubs amendment – one Ethiopian and two Eritrean girls. “Dubs” children are truly alone: they have no family waiting to welcome them and must be entirely supported by the state. Bristol has said it will take seven more.
So with such pressure on foster placements, where do the children end up living? “We’re taking a needs-led approach,” says Ann James, head of service for children in care and care leavers. “If a post-16 child needs a foster placement, that’s what we’ll deliver, and if someone can be more independent then we can offer supported lodgings or sometimes smaller shared accommodation with peripatetic support.”
There is, James emphasises, “a huge commitment” to keep unaccompanied children within the city. “This is a really diverse community and the ability to place young people near to people from their own community is very important.”
The scarcity of placements makes this ambition tough to achieve, and is why local authorities are often dependent on commercial fostering providers who can sometimes offer a place when a council’s own supply has run out.
There has, however, been criticism that Bristol council has been slow to respond to offers of help. Local resident Shazia Malik has enough space to take in two children and says she contacted the council in September but is frustrated that, despite ringing to check on progress, no one from the council has so far been in touch. “We are having to build our capacity to be able to respond to the flood of goodwill,” is James’s careful response.
In Glasgow, the council adopted the concept of “kinship care” to increase its ability to look after unaccompanied minors arriving from abroad. Its new families for unaccompanied children initiative will work with faith communities throughout the city to provide homes for more children as they arrive, in a system similar to that which exists throughout the country when children are placed with relatives rather than foster carers if they cannot be safely looked after by their parents.
“This is a departure from the norm,” acknowledges the council’s leader, Frank McAveety, “but in the face of a humanitarian crisis we have to break new ground.”
Yet while Glasgow is drawing on the goodwill of local citizens to create greater capacity, and Bristol’s welcome for refugee children has been galvanised by a skilled group of activists from the charity Citizens UK, other councils have taken the decision not to accept any unaccompanied children at all.
This is because while the Home Office says it has “substantially increased” the levels of funding to care for unaccompanied children – with an additional £60,000 available for each region, according to a spokesperson – council leaders insist that the funding on offer meets barely 50% of the cost of looking after a child who has arrived in the country alone.
The shortfall is why Leicestershire, the lowest funded county council in the country already buckling under savage budget cuts, has said it will take no more children at present. “We’re currently caring for around 58 young unaccompanied asylum seekers, including seven under the national scheme,” said Ivan Ould, cabinet member for children and families. “These are extremely vulnerable children and we’ve set up a specialist social work team to look after them, and started a campaign to recruit specialist foster carers.
“Reluctantly, the council has decided to pause its involvement in the national scheme, until the government can resolve the serious funding and practical issues involved.” Leicestershire has calculated that, as currently funded, taking its “share” of unaccompanied children would cost £2m a year, at a time when it is being asked to save £100m by 2020 on top of the £135m saved in the past five years.
Holding the home secretary, Amber Rudd, to her promise to take half the unaccompanied children in the Calais camp, Citizens UK wants the UK to bring 1,000 unaccompanied children to this country by Christmas. In his capacity as ADCS president, Hill has written to all local authorities asking them to take three or four children each so the expense of looking after them can be fairly shared.
Hill believes that “at a moment of absolute crisis” all agencies must pull together to care for children properly – and that includes commercial providers. “It’s going to be difficult to find these children places,” he says, “and what it requires is partnership and cooperation – and putting children at the centre of things.”
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