5.1.1 Unaccompanied Minor Team

Introduction
Transfer to Leaving Care and Independent Service
The Services Provided by the Unaccompanied Minors Team (UMT)
Assessments by the Unaccompanied Minors Team (UMT)
Administrative Support

1. Introduction

Croydon Unaccompanied Minors Team (UMT) provides a specialist service for asylum seeking children and young people under the age of 18 arriving in the UK without any adult to assume responsibility for them.

Croydon has the highest number of Looked After unaccompanied minors in the UK and this has resulted in Croydon being a key Gateway Authority, having a high-profile, strategic role in the national arena of asylum services.

The service is wholly funded by the Home Office Asylum Grant.

All practitioners have to be qualified and experienced in the statutory field of Looked After children, and have to have sound and updated knowledge of current immigration legislation and procedures, which impact on the service users, all of whom are Accommodated via Section 20 of the Children Act 1989 and for whom the Council is the corporate parent with all the attendant statutory duties.

2. Transfer to Leaving Care and Independent Service

Unaccompanied minors usually transfer to the Leaving Care and Independent Service before they reach 18 to prepare for independent living as young adults.

There are also, however, a number of 18+ young people who continue to be supported by the Unaccompanied Minors Team (UMT), as they are legacy age-assessments cases for whom the Home Office has failed to change the dates of birth and who cannot transfer in the normal way to the Leaving Care and Independent Service.

This result in the UMT having to complete Needs Assessments, Pathway Plans and Risk Assessments as set out in the Leaving Care Procedure. Certain of these are failed asylum seekers with no recourse to public funds.

3. The Services Provided by the Unaccompanied Minors Team (UMT)

The UMT provides three essential service elements:

An initial referral and assessment service
Long-term childcare service; and
A leaving care service

4. Assessments by the Unaccompanied Minors Team (UMT)

None of the service users are indigenous, 99% have no English and many are illiterate. They have no knowledge of this society, or previous history in it, but come from a wide range of diverse religious and cultural backgrounds. Many also need assistance with very basic tasks, which are usually taken for granted. This essentially impedes the statutory assessment process, as well as the fact that none of them has any adult or family or friends to assume responsibility for them who might provide background information to assist the practitioner in the assessment process.

The assessments carried out by UMT workers are not only those falling under the Children Acts 1989 and 2004 but include other specialist assessments such as age assessments which determine service eligibility from the local authority as minors - or the Home Office as adults. The team carries out age assessments on behalf of other services areas within Croydon as well as in other local authorities.

The service also provides a daily Duty Intake Team of staff working in the Asylum Screening Unit/Home office alongside immigration colleagues to complete Initial Assessments of newly arrived unaccompanied minors, assessing for service eligibility by Croydon and assisting immigration officers in liaison with other local authorities on safeguarding issues. See also Unaccompanied Minors Team Duty Procedure.

The Team also operates the Pan-London rota for fairly distributing amongst the London boroughs those new arrivals claiming to be 16 or 17 with no local connection to any local authority.

5. Administrative Support

The Administrative Support Team has broad duties to ensure the effective administrative support of the specialist service.

This involves providing additional regulatory and statutory data to senior managers, the Home Office and other specialist service providers.

The Information Manager has responsibility to ensure the maximisation of the claim for the Asylum Grant, as well as other key duties of a financial and budgeting nature, to ensure no loss to the Council.