Lone asylum-seeking children's care causing council overspends

The number of lone asylum-seeking children being cared for in parts of the south is causing huge overspends for many local councils.

On average across England, one in every 10 children in council care in 2024 had fled desperate situations abroad, according to Department for Education data.

In Wokingham borough, it was one in every four children in care and in Hampshire County Council's area last month it was one in five.

The Home Office said it was working with local authorities to support them but the Local Government Association (LGA) has said more "vital" funding was needed.

Across Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Hampshire and Dorset, more than 750 lone asylum-seeking children are being looked after by councils, all hoping to be given refugee status.

Ahmad Othman fled Syria when he was 16. His father had been jailed by the Assad regime and was thought to have died in prison.

Efforts to confirm his death have so far failed and Ahmad believes his father's body lies, unidentified, in one of thousands of mass graves.

"It was scary in my country," he said. "The war, they killed people. Leaving my family was hard but I would be dead if I stayed."

Ahmad has been looked after by West Berkshire Council and a youth homelessness charity called Step by Step.

"I want to say thanks a lot for supporting me. I will be supporting this country in the future," he said.

The number of people claiming asylum in the UK in 2024 reached its highest level since records began in 1979, according to Home Office figures.

Among them were 7,380 children who arrived alone in England, up from 5,080 in 2020.

The government's National Transfer Scheme (NTS) aims to ensure a "fairer, more equitable distribution" of children arriving in the UK alone, across all local councils in England.

Wokingham Borough Council said it had "disproportionately high" numbers because of its "preventative" work to keep local children with their families and the NTS places children from abroad "based on local population sizes".

Hampshire County Council said government grants did not cover the significantly higher cost of looking after separated children once they turned 18, despite their "greater needs".

As a result, it is facing a £4.2m shortfall in its children's services budget in the financial year ending in March 2025.

The LGA said the cost of supporting lone asylum-seeking children often exceeded the grants councils received from the Home Office.

The vast majority of separated children applying for asylum are boys but one in every 25 are girls, like Shula, who is living with a host family in Newbury, Berkshire.

Shula - not her real name - was 16 when she fled her Muslim family to avoid being forced into a marriage she did not want.

She had renounced her faith and feared her "really strict" family would find her and hurt her, or force her to return, after she escaped on a plane with a sister.

"Our country is so strict, we thought people might stop us because we were girls alone," she added.

Shula is the seventh teenager Beverley and Mark Landreth-Smith have welcomed into their home through a hosting programme run by Step by Step.

Mr Landreth-Smith said some of the children they looked after had been subjected to "racist" and "unkind" comments.

"A lot of people were really nice to me," said Shula. "But also there were people that were racist. I don't want them to feel like I'm a bad person."

Now aged 19, Ahmad is studying at Reading College and plans to give back to the UK by becoming an electrical engineer.

The Home Office has granted him five years "leave to remain" in the country as a refugee.

He can then apply for permanent residency and, 12 months after that, British citizenship.

But Step-by-Step, backed by the EveryYouth network of youth homelessness charities, fears many lone asylum-seeking children could now be denied the right to stay in the UK permanently.

The government's new Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill will bar refugees who enter the UK illegally from ever becoming British citizens.

EveryYouth wants separated children to be exempt from this, so they do not face "lifelong legal limbo".

The Home Office said the safety and welfare of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children was its "utmost priority".

"We are continuing to work with local authorities across the UK to support them to fulfil their statutory duties to accommodate unaccompanied children nationwide," it said.

Additional reporting by the BBC Local Data Team

You can follow BBC Berkshire on Facebook, X.