Children’s commissioner visits Baobab

Dame Rachel de Souza came today to Baobab to visit our centre and meet with our young people. She heard first-hand from their difficult experiences of social and care services. She heard about confidentiality being breached by social services, of young people being moved repeatedly between accommodations, of social services and the Home Office disbelieving young people with little support for their disbelief. Baobab young people spoke powerfully about being failed by social services as they arrived in the UK and not receiving the warm and involved care that they deserved as children.

We were encouraged by the warm words of support that Dame de Souza offered to young people and by her positive response to our suggestions for improvements of social service departments. In particular we raised the following points:

• Age assessments should not be done on young people unless significantly over 25 years old;
• transitional safeguarding must be improved as care leavers struggle when reaching the age of 18 and many safeguarding needs arise as social care is reduced;
• in line with all good developmental thinking, the age of maturity should be raised to 25 for vulnerable and traumatized young people who arrive without parental figures;
• no vulnerable unaccompanied young person should ever be housed with unrelated adults.

It was good to hear that the Commissioner agreed with us that refugee children should be offered involved and warm care until they are 25, or that refugee children should be taken out of the domain of the Home Office.

More contacts with Dame de Souza will follow along with increased engagement from the Baobab Centre with the Minister for Children or the Department for Education in the new Labour administration as we continue to raise the issues faced by refugee children.