Children seeking sanctuary in the UK deserve to be met with compassion, respect and the presumption that children are children. Under the Children Act 1989, all children, regardless of how they arrived in the UK, are entitled to protection, support and safety. This duty applies equally to children who arrive in the UK without a parent or other family member and make an asylum application.
Many of these children will have experienced substantial trauma and adversity in their home countries, fleeing war, persecution, poverty and often victims of child trafficking and exploitation. They have often travelled alone and have no friends or family to reach out to when they arrive.
At Barnardo’s, we see too many children seeking sanctuary, particularly arriving alone, and, in the absence of reliable documentation, being subjected to cursory visual checks that wrongly consign them to adult services. This not only robs them of vital protection and support but also exposes them to the very harms we strive to safeguard them against.