Kent social services struggling to cope with children seeking asylum

By The Guardian

Council appeals to Home Office for urgent help with £5.5m funding shortfall as rise of number of under-18s needing foster care more than doubles in year.

A dramatic rise has occurred in the number of unaccompanied children seeking asylum as the Calais migrant crisis has unfolded, leaving Kent social services struggling to cope, county council leaders have warned.

Kent county council has appealed to the Home Office and children’s services across the south of England for urgent help with a £5.5m funding shortfall and the “enormous strain” on social services, and for assistance in finding foster places for the children, who are on their own and as young as 12.

The number of young asylum seekers from countries such as Syria and Iraq aged under 18 and needing foster care after arriving at Dover has risen from 238 a year ago to 369 in April, and has accelerated further over the last three months to the latest figure of 605.

In a further sign of the strain on local services, on Thursday police officers from neighbouring south-east forces were deployed for the first time to help with Operation Stack, which has seen the M20 motorway outside Dover turned into the largest lorry park in Europe. Anne Barnes, Kent’s police and crime commissioner, said the outside officers sent in under the mutual aid scheme were needed because Kent police were “tired and exhausted after many weeks of long shifts in difficult conditions”. Operation Stack has run up a £1m policing bill since 23 June alone.

David Cameron, who arrives back in Britain on Friday, is facing criticism from his own MPs over the government’s failure to ease the long delays faced by hundreds of thousands of British summer holidaymakers trying to get in and out of the country by the cross-Channel routes.

Calais crisis: 'It’s easier to leave us living like this if you say we are bad people'

Transport ministers are urgently working on alternative “lorry park” options, including opening the disused Manston airfield, to deal with the congestion caused by the queueing truck drivers waiting up to 18 hours for the disrupted ferry services to Calais.

Cameron was also roundly attacked by refugee welfare groups and opposition politicians for his use of language in claiming that there was a “swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean ... heading to Britain and seeking a better life”. The Refugee Council described Cameron’s language as “irresponsible and dehumanising”, while the Labour leader, Harriet Harman, simply said he should “remember he is talking about people and not insects”.


The number of attempts made by migrants in Calais to enter the Channel Tunnel on Wednesday night was said to be several hundred, below the 1,500 reported on Tuesday and the 2,000 on Monday.

Paul Carter, the leader of Kent county council, raised both the social services and traffic congestion issues with ministers on Thursday. “We have got two issues,” he said afterwards. “One is having to contend with Operation Stack and the main arterial route, the M20, being closed in both directions. But also, local government has statutory duties to provide care for unaccompanied minors under the age of 18 and those numbers have escalated dramatically in the last four or five weeks.”

Kent county council said it was working with the Association of Directors of Children’s Services to place youngsters where there is space elsewhere in the country after assessment. Compass Fostering, an independent agency, said it had 140 young asylum seekers referred for foster care this month, compared with 60 in May. In July last year, that number was just 34. Most are from war-torn countries in the Middle East – notably Syria and Iraq – as well as Afghanistan and Eritrea in east Africa. The vast majority are boys, with the youngest aged just 12.

Analysis The only 'migrant madness' is the tabloid pretence about events in Calais
It is time to end the lie that a few hundred migrants trying to enter the UK via the Channel tunnel amount to a mass invasion

Compass said most of the referrals have been from local authorities in Kent, West Sussex and London, with police finding children at Gatwick airport and left by motorways. Bernie Gibson, Compass Fostering’s managing director, told the Guardian it was a highly significant increase, and highlighted the need for more foster carers countrywide. “We’re lucky to have foster carers who speak many languages, but we always need more people who can look after these very vulnerable young people.

“Many don’t speak the language and clearly they are traumatised by what they have come from. I think our message would be that it’s time to put the political issues aside and really focus on the rights of these children to a caring and loving home.”

Foster carer Sheinaz Mouradi, 44, who speaks five languages, said her skills were invaluable because of the numbers of children needing fostering who do not speak English. “If you can speak to them, it’s so much easier to get them to open up, the language barrier can be very hard, you need to communicate just to feel a little more comfortable.”

Mouradi, from Ealing, west London, has fostered children for five years, including two 16-year-old asylum seekers from Morocco. One arrived in Southampton having hidden himself on a boat, without knowing where he would end up. The other boy had clung to the undercarriage of a lorry to enter the UK.

“It has not been easy. They have no families and they have had to be self-sufficient, living on the streets, and have been exposed to a lot of crime, so they are naturally a bit more grown-up,” she said. “Children who are asylum seekers are not easy, but the boys who have been with us have learnt to read and write, and started to speak English well.”