This article in the Guardian reports that French children’s services are struggling to cope with a dramatic surge in unaccompanied refugee children who have abandoned plans to travel to the UK and now want to remain in France.
In the past three months, staff employed by the main French charity working with refugee children in Calais have had to turn away between 15 and 35 unaccompanied refugee children every day because they have no beds for them in the emergency shelter. According to the director of the charity running the child refugee centre, since July around 95% of the unaccompanied children who come to the charity for assistance say they want to remain in France permanently. This is a huge change from last year, when only 15% of the 1,483 unaccompanied children that staff registered at the France Terre d’Asile emergency shelter in Saint Omer, said they wanted to stay; the remaining 85% returned to the Calais camp after a five-day break, to try to travel on to the UK.