New RMCC Briefing Raises Concerns About the Decline in Asylum Grant Rates for UASCs in the UK.

A new briefing from the Refugee Migrant Children’s Consortium (RMCC) today confirms our worst fears about recent changes in asylum law: unaccompanied children seeking refugee in the UK are being refused protection at an accelerating rate, including when they are under-18, and including from countries such as Afghanistan, Iran, or Vietnam. Shockingly, grant rates for unaccompanied children receiving asylum while under-18 have fallen 13%, to 69% only in 2025. After they turn 18, the refusal rate is now at an astounding 55% — meaning that more than 1 young person in 2, who’ve spent years already in this country, far away from home, trying to get an education, training, a job, building a life here with new friends, is being refused — to go where?

This is happening at the same time as government is seeking changes to the law to end care leavers’ protection until young people are 21 — rules that ensure that support for unaccompanied children does not stop abruptly on their 18^th birthday.

Children and young people who have fled some of the worst horrors and travelled alone half throughout the world, facing abuse, exploitation, trafficking, violence and sometimes torture, deserve far better. They deserve a chance to rebuild shattered lives here, as quickly as possible, as sustainably as possible. They deserve, as all children do, care, attention, trust and a sense of hope in their future.

Together with all partners in the RMCC we call on asylum stakeholders to ensure:

• That children who arrive unaccompanied receive prompt and long-lasting, secure asylum protection — so they don’t spend years in legal uncertainty;
• That children who arrive unaccompanied receive child-centered care, immediately upon arrival, around their safeguarding, health, security and education needs;
• That the Home Office carve-out from Corporate Parenting duties be abolished — the Home Office should be bound by the same common-sense safeguarding principles as all other public bodies in the UK when working with children.