Child migrants to have priority in NHS

YOUNG children who arrive in Britain as unaccompanied asylum seekers should get first place in the queue for schools and healthcare, a High Court judge declared yesterday.

He called on social workers to make sure children who arrive to claim asylum without their parents or anyone else to look after them should have priority in getting NHS medical care or therapy.

Such children should also have priority

for places in oversubscribed schools, Mr Justice Peter Jackson said.

The judge set out the need to give young unaccompanied asylum seekers special treatment in the NHS and the education system in a test case involving two young Afghan boys, aged nine and 10.

The two boys, identified only as J and T, are thought to come from North West Afghanistan and arrived in the North West of England 16 months after leaving.

Mr Justice Jackson said social workers were right to apply for a court care order to give an unnamed local council full powers to act in place of their parents.

Older children arriving as unaccompanied asylum seekers might be given housing under less sweeping court orders, the judge said in the family court in Liverpool.