Refugees: Children

Question

Safeguarding procedures are in place to ensure children in temporary accommodation are safe and supported until a permanent place can be found with a local authority.

The Department for Education’s Statutory guidance on children who go missing from care requires local authorities to share data on all missing children locally in a multi-agency forum to ensure children who have gone missing are appropriately safeguarded.

All incidents of children going missing are recorded by local police forces. The immigration status of a child may not be recorded by police if it is not believed relevant to the incident, which may be the case if, for example, a child in local authority care has had refugee status for some time.

Data on the number of all child refugees reported missing in 2021 is therefore not collated by central government in a reportable way.