At the UK border there are almost 600 children living in a makeshift camp. Nearly 300 of them live on their own, exposed to neglect, abuse and exploitation.
This refugee camp in Calais is both a shining example of human ingenuity, compassion and creativity, and a huge safeguarding risk to the children living there. As social workers we know only too well how vulnerable children are in transient, unsupervised and chaotic environments.
A report by the EU police agency Europol in January found that 10,000 unaccompanied asylum-seeking and migrant children have disappeared since entering Europe. Despite this unprecedented emergency, there is no coordinated social work response. Safeguarding children is our priority and duty, so the absence of intervention or lobbying from the social work profession is notable.
At Social Work First (SWF) we want to address this. The project was set up in February 2016 by two social worker from Kent with the explicit aim of coordinating a social work response to safeguarding issues in the Calais refugee camp. Four months on, we have more than 200 volunteers and for the past two months we’ve had a weekly presence in the camp.
The SWF volunteers have been working alongside the already established Refugee Youth Service and Women and Children’s Service to identify unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, and have begun to carry out assessments to try to strengthen the children’s legal cases to get to the UK.
These assessments provide a crucial picture of life inside the camp and how the experience affects the children. The assessments can also inform the continuation of care once the children enter the UK.
SWF workers have met young children in the camps who are sleeping in tents with unrelated adults. Reports from transit camps across the EU have highlighted the grave risk of sexual exploitation. We would consider the situation to be intolerable if it were applied to our own children.
While the government tacitly deems these conditions acceptable through its lack of action, members of SWF are using their professional voice to say a resounding “no”. This is not acceptable. These children, and their families if they have them, must be removed from these conditions now, and the government must offer safe environments for them as a matter of urgency.
The SWF project is in its early days, but so far we have faced numerous barriers. In working alongside migrants and asylum seekers we are up against a dominant political narrative that dehumanises and blames.
It is not possible to talk about empowerment without addressing the socio-political onslaught that refugees are facing from the British and French states, which knowingly demonise and marginalise them.
To acknowledge this, we are trying to tackle the crisis on both the political and the social fronts by providing a social work presence in the camp to assess, support and safeguard vulnerable people, while campaigning for Britain and France to uphold the human rights of the camp’s inhabitants.
Given what we at SWF have achieved in just two months, we believe we could do much more with the support of other social work organisations. This is an opportunity to use the unique skills and wisdom of the social work profession to defend the rights of some of the most marginalised people in the world today, right here on our doorstep. This is our chance to reclaim the profession from state administration and practise international social work.
Social workers are fighting back. Over the coming months the Social Work Action Network, the British Association of Social Workers, Social Workers Without Borders and SWF will be coming together to establish a strategy for social work action in solidarity with asylum seekers, refugees and migrants here in the UK and at our borders.
We aim to promote the continued care of asylum seekers and refugees in the UK. To do this we must also lobby the UK and French governments to provide safe passage for people to the UK . We urge you to join us.
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