Children treated as adults - Experiences at Dover and Manston for asylum seeking children

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about unaccompanied asylum seeking children who were housed in Home Office run hotels. The Independent Report into the 6 hotels in question (all based in the South East) found safeguarding failures and- importantly- noted that that there was ‘no agency or government department (with) statutory responsibility’ for the children living the hotels.  

I reflected that children in these hotels were treated like adults.  

Presumptions that young asylum seekers are adults pretending to be children pervade the anti -immigration rhetoric perpetrated by the government and certain media. This may in turn give rise to practices by the state which fail to treat children as children. In fact, a report by the Refugee Council from September 2022 found that during the preceding year, 233 young asylum seekers were classed with ‘certainty’ as adults by an initial Home Office assessment, but subsequent age assessments had shown that 219 of those individuals were in fact children.   

This week, there are further examples of the adultification and dehumanisation of asylum seeking children - including unaccompanied children-  in the independent inspection by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons of short term holding facilities in Western Jet Foil (Dover), Lydd Airport and Manston. 

WJF in Dover and Lydd Airport (which was out of use at the time of the inspection) are Home Office facilities and the first places individuals who have crossed the channel by boat will be escorted to by military staff after “dangerous and often harrowing journeys on small boats from France”. Detainees are formally arrested by border force at these facilities, as well as being given dry clothes, food and medical checks. They are then transferred to Manston - a “short term holding facility”. 

The following extracts from the report are relevant to the treatment of children at these facilities. Whilst there were examples of positive interactions and practice, the following was of concern; 

1.6 Forty children had been held at Manston from April to June 2022, five of whom were unaccompanied. The documented average length of detention for unaccompanied children was 27 hours and the longest was 48 hours, which was far too long 

  3.5 Detainees (at WJF)  were then searched in full view of others, including rub-down searches of women and children. Some staff were abrupt and impatient, including with children. We observed one member of Border Force staff pulling a young child by the arm with no explanation to start the rub-down search. The parent of another young child was instructed via gestures to remove the child’s earrings despite the child experiencing pain and distress as the parent struggled to do this. (emphasis added) 

 3.22 The governance of security clearances and disclosure and barring service (DBS) checks on staff at WJF and Manston was weak, with no central record of clearances of staff. We were unable to determine if all staff had had clearance to work with children and vulnerable adults. 

 4.16 We observed sensitive interactions between staff and migrants in the waiting area for women, unaccompanied minors and families. However, a toddler was separated from his mother to be examined by a paramedic in front of unrelated adult men. (emphasis added) 

Since the release of the report, there have been numerous press articles about the conditions in the Manston short term facility.  

Again, it is perhaps helpful to think about how the UK is meeting its obligation under the UNCRC in this context. Often discussions about unaccompanied asylum seeking children are framed in terms of an immigration rather than a child protection issue, and this may in itself be problematic. ECPAT, in their August 2022 report, highlighted the exclusion of unaccompanied asylum seeking children from the looked after child system.  

There are numerous other ways in which children with international connections may experience inequalities and discrimination in the context of state child protection. The adversities experienced by children arriving in Kent provide a further example of the way that a child’s origin and journey to the UK may impact the nature and extent of the protection they will receive when they arrive.