Calais Children

Children from the Calais migrant camp will begin arriving in the UK next week. Apparently, all these children have relatives in the UK.

In England we already have a lot of “looked after children.”  A child is “looked after” by a local authority if a court has granted a care order to place a child in care, or a council's children's services department has cared for the child for more than 24 hours.

The number of “looked after children” has risen steadily over the years - on 31 March 2016, in England, there were 70,440.  This figure showed a 1% increase over the previous year (5% since 2012) and included 1470 new unaccompanied asylum seeking children compared to a rise of 970 in all looked after children.  You may agree that these figures are shocking, both in social and economic terms?

It is to be hoped that the new arrivals from Calais will be quickly integrated with their relatives here and will not add to the disturbing numbers of children already without a proper home.