Kentish Express Ashford & District
We have a duty to house children
Kent has been in the news with KCC’s announcement that its accommodation for lone child asylum seekers seeking help will run out by the end of this month.
We are talking here about children who have been separated from their parents and have arrived on the Kent coast in small boats, frightened, traumatised and most importantly, completely on their own.
Most of them are boys between the age of 14 and 17, with many of them making their 3,000-mile journey from the Sudan, an African state facing political instability following years of civil war, where children, in particular, are at risk.KCC has a legal duty under the Children Act to take these children into care on their arrival in Britain.
The trouble is, that because of its long Channel coastline, Kent is under disproportionate pressure to look after them compared with other local authorities.
It is true to say that under the National Transfer scheme, many children are moved to other parts of the country, but because of the high numbers involved, Kent is struggling to cope.
It is already accounting for 423 children, with 77 of these awaiting transfer to other local authorities.
As from last year, Kent and other authorities were banned by the High Court from placing these children in hotels on the south coast with the attendant danger of them falling into the hands of traffickers with the possibility of being forced into domestic servitude, sexual exploitation and other forms of forced labour.
This goes some way to explain why, between 2021 and 2023, of the 440 who went missing from these hotels, 132 were subsequently not found.
Kent can still legally place unaccompanied children in hotels in “true emergency situations” and it wouldn’t surprise me if that is what it will be forced to do this summer, if the number of new arrivals overwhelm it.
Whatever feelings people have about people arriving in small boats, all but the hardest of hearts must agree that we should do our best to help these lone children.
I’m reminded of the example of Nicholas Winton, who in 1939 helped over 600 Jewish children who travelled by rail and boat and arrived alone in Britain fleeing from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.
As individual citizens we can’t do much, but we can encourage KCC, other local authorities and the Home Office to emulate Winton’s
example. Namely, double up their efforts, work together as quickly as possible and plan to safely accommodate these children asylum seekers, with all authorities equally pulling their weight and doing their bit.
Then, hopefully, we will be able to congratulate them that, in doing so, they had reflected one strand of what being British is all about, namely, they swiftly showed compassion to helpless children in the direst of need.
John Cooper