Train foster carers and support workers to meet the safeguarding needs of unaccompanied asylum seeking children

The Department is looking to appoint a provider to set up and deliver 1,000 training places at suitable regional venues across England. The training will equip foster carers and support workers of unaccompanied asylum seeking children with knowledge and skills to enable them to build swift and strong trusting bonds with these children. This in turn, will reduce the risk of these children going missing from their care placements, being trafficked onwards or being victims of sexual, economic or other forms of exploitation or other harmful influence.

Unaccompanied asylum seeking children are under 18 years old and are applying for asylum in their own right. They have been separated from both parents and are not being cared for in the UK by an adult who in law or by custom has a responsibility to do so.

Under section 20 of the Children Act 1989, the local authority where an unaccompanied or asylum seeking child first presents has a duty to accommodate the child because "there is no other person who has parental responsibility for him". A child who is accommodated under section 20 by the local authority for a continuous period of more than 24 hours becomes a looked after child (LAC). The local authority then has a set of duties that relate to caring for any LAC.

Unaccompanied children are then looked after by foster carers who have been assessed and registered by a fostering service provider under regulations 26 and 27 of the Fostering Services Regulations (England) 2011, or placed in semi-independent living placements.

The training will equip foster carers and support workers of semi-independent living placements to:

• understand and respond to the particular needs and vulnerabilities of this group of children, including radicalisation;

• quickly gain children's trust in order to prevent them from running away from a safe placement;

• better understand and recognise the signs and risks of exploitation of these children including trafficking; and

• understand when and how to refer children to the right agencies or to support children to access the right help.