The Child Minder

News that the Home Office is set to split represents an opportunity for young offenders and asylum-seeking children that should not - but, sadly, probably will - be missed.

With everything changing, the government should grab the chance to move these most vulnerable of children to the department responsible for all other vulnerable children: the Department for Education and Skills.

Moving responsibility for the youth justice system to a new Ministry of Justice is potentially preferable to current arrangements. But it would still make more sense to place young offenders alongside care leavers, given their often similar needs and the significant overlap between these two populations.

Moving responsibility for unaccompanied minors to a new Home Office devoted entirely to tackling terrorism and immigration, meanwhile, can only be bad news. The recent paper on reforming services for unaccompanied minors has already revealed that, for as long as they remain within the Home Office's remit, these children will receive a second-class service and be seen as a problem to remove rather than children to help.

If the government genuinely wants to make every child matter, it must grab with both hands this opportunity to put young offenders and asylum-seeking children on an equal footing with all other children.

Was it just me who missed the part in yesterday's Budget about all the money set aside for children's social services? Didn't think so.

I am not denying that education is important. But so are many other aspects of a child's life.

Efforts to address child poverty are also welcome. But, as Clare Tickell from NCH, pointed out: "This Budget may lift 200,000 children out of poverty, but this is a drop in the ocean for the 3.4 million youngsters affected."

I was pleased to learn this week that the health secretary will be forced to face up to the real life, everyday implications of NHS bodies struggling to balance their books.

Hounslow Council should be congratulated for flagging up to Patricia Hewitt the potential impact of NHS cuts on young people with mental health problems in their area and pointing out just how difficult these local decisions can be.

Hounslow's problems are symptomatic of a far wider issue that has seen social care services cut - or thresholds to access them rise - up and down the country.

Whatever the reason for the current funding situation in the NHS, vulnerable people should not be the ones paying the price. And Ms Hewitt would do well to acknowledge that and do something about it.

The government's suggestion that it is OK to place 16-year-old unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in 'independent living arrangements' - including B&B accommodation - when they have already acknowledged that most children of this age would find leaving home 'alien' stinks of discrimination.

Why would a child who has experienced terrible loss and trauma and finds themself in a strange country need less support than any other child? Surely they need more.

Care Matters rightly proposes that most children in care should remain with their carers until at least age 18. It even plans to pilot allowing young people to continue to live with their foster familes up to the age of 21.

Things are always going to become problematic once unaccompanied asylum-seeking children turn 18 given the Home Office's determination to increase the number it sends home (and the speed with which it does so). But we must at least ensure that, before these young people turn 18, they are treated the same as all other children in care living in the UK.

The proposed improvements to the care system are welcome, but they must be open to all. A two-tier care system based on a child's nationality (or anything else for that matter) is not acceptable.

At a meeting of key players in the children's sector earlier this week to discuss the proposals contained in the Care Matters green paper, one message that came across loud and clear is the need for beter placement choice for children in care.

But key to that is ensuring the availability of quality residential care placements, as well as quality foster care placements.

Commission for Social Care Inspection chair Denise Platt criticised the "underlying antipathy" towards residential care in the government's proposals and ensuing discussions, while Victoria Climbie Inquiry chair Lord Laming complained about the polarised debate on the issue.

Research by A National Voice, which represents care leavers and children in care, confirms the importance to young poeple of having the option of a place in a decent children's home as an alternative to a foster care placement.

For their sakes, we must not allow residential care to be devalued or treated as second best. We should be focusing our efforts instead on ensuring residential staff receive the training they need to give children in their care the necessary support.