ESN traveled to Brussels in May 2016 to launch the publication from our 3-year long study 'Investing in Children's Services, Improving Outcomes' at the European Parliament. A key focus within this work was on unaccompanied minors and how to best care for them. This video, the first of a two part series, highlights the work being done across Europe to integrate and care for these children and to make them more visible in both children's and migration policy.
CEO of the European Social Network, John Halloran tells us about the launch of ESN’s European study called ‘Unaccompanied minors, a duty of justice and care’. Michele Levoy, Alfonso Lara-Montero, Fanny Bertrand and Graham Owen tell us about challenges, policy developments and approaches to the question of unaccompanied children.
John Halloran, CEO, European Social Network: ‘The European Social Network has been concerned about the question of unaccompanied minors for some while now and in fact we undertook a major European study called ‘Unaccompanied minors, a duty of justice and care’ but more recently this question has become even more important, I think. ESN is working with many of its members, most notably but not exclusively in Germany and in Sweden to look at how local authorities might best respond to this question.’
Michele Levoy, Director, Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM): ‘About 1 in 3 arrivals nowadays in the EU, coming by sea or by land, are children. We increasingly see children amongst migrant and refugee arrivals and we feel that they have a heightened risk of vulnerability. The additional challenge that we see is that children for the most part still remain quite invisible in migration policy, and migrant children in children’s policy also have to become more visible.’
Alfonso Lara-Montero, Policy Director, European Social Network: ‘It is very important that policy developments are taking place both at European, national and local level. At the European level, there have been a number of developments taking place, particularly around DG Justice and DG Employment and Social Affairs’
Fanny Bertrand, Project Manager & Directorate, Pas de Calais County Council, France : ‘The care and protection of non-national, unaccompanied minors falls within the remit of the French departments. Given that their isolation and status as minors qualifies them by law as vulnerable children. This is therefore a matter of local, departmental jurisdiction.’
Graham Owen, Director of Social Services (Municipality of Trosa), National Association of Social Services Directors (FSS), Sweden: In the end we’re dealing with vulnerable children and, in Sweden anyway, when we provide services, we see unaccompanied minors just as any other child really. The difference is that they don’t even know if they’re going to be staying in the country, maybe they don’t even know where their parents are, but we try to look after them in the sense that they are children who are vulnerable and in need of care and support.’