Concerns for child migrants as Kent County Council hits capacity

Children arriving alone in Kent will be held at a Home Office facility

Charities have raised concerns about a facility used to hold child migrants after Kent County Council (KCC) said it had reached capacity.

Under-18s arriving alone will be held at a Home Office site in Dover until a place can be found in another county.

Charities said keeping children at the Kent Intake Unit, which was criticised by inspectors in October, was "deeply inappropriate" and "abhorrent".

The Home Office said lone children are held for as short a period as possible.

KCC stopped taking unaccompanied asylum-seeking children into its care at 06:00 BST on Monday and has threatened legal action against the home secretary over the "extreme pressure" on its services.

Children will now remain at the Kent Intake Unit (KIU) at the Port of Dover until a placement with social services elsewhere in the country can be arranged.

Last week, KCC had warned it was the second time its services had been overwhelmed by the number of unaccompanied minors arriving by boat.

On Monday, the authorities dealt with five boats crossing the Channel, carrying 110 migrants, the Home Office said. It is not known how many were children.

The Home Office said the Kent Intake Unit is a "short-term holding facility"

HM Inspectorate of Prisons visited the KIU in September and found that "children were held for far too long and often overnight" in facilities with "no access to the open air and little or no natural light".

More than a quarter of unaccompanied children were held for more than 24 hours, with one 15-year-old boy held for more than 66 hours, it found.

Bridget Chapman, of Kent Refugee Action Network, which works with young asylum seekers in the county, said the KIU was a "wholly inappropriate" environment for children to be left for such long periods.

"It is abhorrent to keep children in these kind of conditions," she said.

The Refugee Council provides support for children arriving at the KIU, but its services are designed to cover "basic needs over a short period of time," it said.

Helen Johnson, head of children's services at the charity, said: "Delays in placements keep children, who have already endured horrific experiences, in a state of limbo and uncertainty."

Bella Sankey, director of charity Detention Action, said: "It is of deep concern that the Home Office is going to start detaining traumatised refugee children at our border."

She described the KIU as a "deeply inappropriate detention facility", adding that the charity was looking at "options to challenge this practice" in the courts.

The Home Office said it had made improvements at the "short-term holding facility", including hiring a team of social workers who will carry out age assessments and help improve safeguarding.

It said "vital updates" to a national transfer scheme would "alleviate pressures" on areas like Kent and help quickly disperse lone children to councils across the country.

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