Minimum standards for child services

Inadequacies in services for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children will be addressed in a consultation paper out this month, a Home Office official told a Community Care conference this week.

Brian Kinney, the new director of the department’s unaccompanied asylum-seeking children’s reform team, said services were currently inconsistent and that a “minimum level of standards” was needed.

Kinney also criticised a “lack of alignment” between the immigration and care systems.

Children would be placed in future with fewer councils and only ones where “expert infrastructure” existed, he added.

Community Care revealed in March that a small number of councils in England could take over the care of all unaccompanied asylum seeking children (Cost-cutting fears over proposals to reform care of child asylum seekers).