All Articles: unaccompanied children

The impact of age assessment decisions on unaccompanied asylum seeking children coming to the UK is huge. As we explored in this earlier article, an age assessment decision will affect a young person’s entitlement to social work support and care. It will also have implications on how their asylum claim...

28th September 2023
BY Francesca Sella

The Home Secretary’s systematic and routine accommodation of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in hotels is unlawful, the High Court has held. The case, R (on the application of ECPAT UK) v Kent County Council and another [2023] EWHC 1953 (Admin), looks at what happens when local authorities don’t comply with their...

3rd August 2023
BY Deborah Revill

The High Court has decided it should not invoke its wardship jurisdiction in relation to missing and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. In Article 39 v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWHC 1398 (Fam), Article 39, a charity promoting and protecting the rights of children in England who are...

13th June 2023
BY Bilaal Shabbir

The Home office has published new guidance introducing a streamlined process to deal with child asylum applications. The policy explained in the guidance apparently intends to help the Home Office fulfil the commitment made by Rishi Sunak to clear the asylum backlog by the end of 2023. The policy applies...

21st March 2023
BY Francesca Sella

An inspection report examining the use of hotels for housing unaccompanied asylum-seeking children has been published this week, but the findings make for unsettling reading. The report criticises the operation of what are effectively unregistered children’s homes and confirms that this is not an area in which the Home Office...

21st October 2022
BY Eorann O'Connor

Hundreds of refugee children denied reunion with family in the UK may be able to challenge that decision following a ruling that Home Office policy on “Dublin III” transfers is in part unlawful. The case is R (Safe Passage International) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWHC...

5th July 2021
BY CJ McKinney

Immigration law, as everyone working in it knows, is not a devolved area and not likely to become so. It’s therefore easy for immigration practitioners to assume that all the important stuff is the same across the UK. That’s not the case for social care rights, which can help vulnerable...

26th May 2021
BY Siȃn Pearce

Greece and the UK have signed a new strategic action plan committing to further their cooperation on migration. It has gone largely unreported in mainstream media, but some Greek and English news outlets noted that the joint plan includes the relocation of unaccompanied minors and family reunification from Greece to the UK....

11th May 2020
BY Lucy Alper

The Court of Appeal has returned to the legal issues arising from the closure of the Calais refugee camp in September 2016 and section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016, which forced the Home Office to develop a process for admitting unaccompanied children from the camp into the United Kingdom....

15th April 2020
BY Alex Schymyck

The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that it is unlawful to completely withdraw all housing and financial support from an asylum seeker, even if they have breached the rules of an accommodation centre. In Case C-233/18 Haqbin v Federaal Agentschap voor de opvang van asielzoekers, the...

14th November 2019
BY Alex Schymyck

Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children often get short term leave to remain in the UK for only 30 months or until they turn 17-and-a-half, whichever is the shorter period of time. While they may get extensions at the end of such periods often they simply get removed from the country. Thus, age...

25th July 2019
BY Devyani Prabhat

States have domestic and international legal obligations to provide suitable housing for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. But a vulnerable young client at the Refugee Legal Support (RLS) clinic in Athens was last month kicked out of his accommodation for breaking the shelter’s rules. Jay*, a 17-year-old boy from Afghanistan, was condemned...

4th July 2019
BY Natasha Jackson

Immigration judges must assess whether an asylum seeker had a reasonable opportunity to claim asylum in a safe third country before holding that a failure to do so should damage their credibility, the Court of Appeal has ruled. KA (Afghanistan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA...

12th June 2019
BY Alex Schymyck

It’s not often these days that we see a positive result from the Court of Appeal, but just before the bank holiday two out of three Lord Justices declared that Home Office policy on assessing the age of asylum seekers is unlawful. The case is BF (Eritrea) v Secretary of...

28th May 2019
BY CJ McKinney

This is the second of two Court of Appeal cases this year about whether the Home Office behaved unlawfully towards vulnerable child asylum seekers during and after the demolition of the Calais refugee camp in 2016. The first appeal, R (Citizens UK) v SSHD [2018] EWCA Civ 1812, concerned children...

5th October 2018
BY Alex Schymyck

There are a considerable number of asylum claims in the UK by young Afghan boys and men. The number should not be overstated, though. The latest immigration statistics show that Afghans are still outside the top five nationalities claiming asylum in the UK (excluding dependents). They also record that of...

21st June 2018
BY Colin Yeo

Most unaccompanied child asylum seekers and refugees will be “children in need” for the purposes of the Children Act 1989. So the issue of whether or not local authorities have properly exercised their duties to provide accommodation and care frequently arises for this vulnerable group. In R (KI) v London...

13th June 2018
BY Sophie Caseley
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