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C H A P T E R 8
The Need for a Legal Guardian
Unaccompanied or separated children are insufficiently prepared for entering the
asylum determination process — they sometimes misunderstand the purposes of
the screening interview and are not always provided with appropriate care by the
local authority accommodating them.
These are just a few of the difficulties they face
attempting to navigate a complex asylum determination
process alone and far from home. In rare cases an unaccompanied
or separated child is placed with a foster carer
who does adopt a holistic parental role and tries to represent
the child’s views to the local authority and ensure
good quality legal representation. Sometimes these foster
carers are even interested in formally adopting the unaccompanied
or separated children in their care. Others
have formed a group to lobby for former unaccompanied
or separated children to be permitted to remain in the
U.K. after they became 18 on the basis of the private
life they had established with their foster carers.
Regrettably however, this level of “parental” support
is often not offered and the unaccompanied or
separated child is accommodated by a local authority
in hostel or semi-independent accommodation, or
with a foster carer who does not raise any of the unaccompanied
or separated child’s concerns with the
relevant local authority and who may not even understand
the asylum process the child is going through. In
such cases, and they are frequent, the unaccompanied
or separated child has no adult to take responsibility
for his or her day to day welfare or long term protection
needs (which may be unmet if he or she is not
granted asylum). Instead there are a plethora of adults
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