"Ten years ago, Parliament demanded that the Home Office, in all of its immigration and asylum functions, must promote and protect the welfare of children," says Lucy Leon, Policy & Practice Adviser – Refugee & Migrant Children at The Children’s Society in this guest blog post for the Refugee Council. "But a decade later some policies still fail in this duty, particularly the one that makes it almost impossible for child refugees, alone in the UK, to be reunited with their family."
"To really put into practice the duty enshrined in law ten years ago," says Leon, "the Home Office needs to understand this as well: children need to be safe, they need to be with whatever family they have left and they need to be listened to. These are all key aspects of their best interests. This anti-family reunion policy – which treats children in a less favourable way than adults– has damaging consequences for the children that need our protection and for whom the Secretary of State has a clear responsibility to protect."