Fostering an Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Child: What It Really Involves

The call often comes late in the afternoon. A fifteen-year-old arrived in Kent two days ago, speaks perhaps thirty words of English, and needs somewhere to sleep tonight. You have an hour to say yes or no. That is how fostering an unaccompanied asylum-seeking child usually begins, and carers tell us it is the part they wish someone had explained properly beforehand. So here it is: what the role asks of you, and where the help comes from.

Please note: this is general information for people thinking about fostering, not immigration, legal or medical advice. Nobody should act on it in an individual case. Immigration rules changed for asylum claims lodged on or after 2 March 2026 (see the Home Office guidance on permission to stay on a protection route) and they change often, so anything about a particular child’s claim belongs with that child’s solicitor and social worker. Figures here are correct at August 2026. The statutory framework for these children is the Department for Education guidance Care of unaccompanied migrant children and child victims of modern slavery (November 2017).

Who arrives, and why they arrive on their own

There were 6,540 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in care in England on 31 March 2025, out of 81,770 looked-after children in total, so about 8 per cent of all children in care. London carries far more than its share. London Councils and the Association of London Directors of Children’s Services reported in June 2025 that unaccompanied children make up roughly 16 per cent of looked-after children in London boroughs, and that London supported around a third of England’s unaccompanied children between 2019 and 2023. If you live in Croydon or Newham or Waltham Forest, these are your local children in care.

They have left home for reasons that are mostly not complicated, only terrible:

• escaping a war, or persecution for their religion, ethnicity, politics or sexuality
• fleeing gender-based violence, including so-called honour killing
• being trafficked, or forced into drug smuggling, unpaid labour or fighting
• drought, hunger or the collapse of anywhere safe to live

Some were separated from their parents on the road. Some watched their family die. And some were deliberately sent alone, because a family could scrape together the money for one person to get out and chose their child. That last one is worth sitting with. A boy who tells you his mother put him on a lorry is not telling you he was abandoned.

The first 72 hours are a safeguarding window, not a settling-in period

This is the most important thing on this page. The Department for Education’s statutory guidance is blunt about it: unaccompanied and trafficked children are at risk of going missing from care, often within the first 72 hours. Traffickers know when a child arrives and sometimes still have a phone number, a debt, or a hold over the family back home. A young person who seems calm and grateful on Tuesday can be gone by Thursday morning, and not because anything you did was wrong.

Your supervising social worker will talk you through the child’s risk assessment and what to do if they go missing, before the child arrives where that is possible. Alongside that, the ordinary human things matter more here than almost anywhere else in fostering:

• introduce everyone in the household by name, slowly, including the dog
• cook something, checking first for halal, kosher, vegetarian or allergy needs
• a card signed by the family costs nothing and gets kept for years
• have a few basics ready that fit who they are: comfortable clothes, something to read or listen to in their own language
• write your phone number on a card for their pocket, and make sure they know 999

Keep the first week small. Short trips, familiar food, the television off more than on. Culture shock is physical as well as emotional, and a trip to Westfield on day two is not kindness.

Language comes down faster than you expect

You do not need to speak Tigrinya, Pashto or Kurdish Sorani. Carers manage the first fortnight on pictures, gestures, a translation app and a lot of patience, and then things move. Ask about free ESOL classes locally; the Refugee Council can help with that too. Cooking together is the best language lesson going, because it needs almost no words and produces something at the end of it.

School is the other half of this. Being an unaccompanied child is not in itself a special educational need, so language support varies a great deal from school to school; ask early rather than assuming. Every child in care has a Personal Education Plan, and that is the place to pin down who is actually teaching them English and when. Most of what we have written about how foster carers support children at school applies here, with the language piece bolted on.

Health, including the parts nobody mentions

Under the same statutory guidance a health assessment should happen before the child is placed, or by their first review if that isn’t reasonably practicable. Expect gaps. Immunisations may be years behind, teeth and eyes may never have been checked, and some young people arrive underweight or carrying untreated injuries from the journey. Some have experienced sexual violence. Some girls have undergone female genital mutilation. Some arrive pregnant. None of this is yours to assess or manage alone, and the team should have a written health plan rather than leaving it to whoever notices first.

The emotional side is slower and less visible. You may see nightmares, disturbed sleep, self-harm, or a flatness that looks like coping and isn’t. Waiting for a decision on an asylum claim is corrosive in its own right, and the wait can run for a very long time. Some young people also worry that seeing a therapist will somehow count against their claim; if that comes up, raise it with the child’s social worker and solicitor rather than letting it sit unanswered. Our article on trauma and attachment covers the day-to-day of this properly.

Keeping hold of who they are

A child who loses their country should not have to lose the rest of it as well. Practically, that means finding out what they believe and what they eat, and then acting on it: a prayer mat and a quiet corner, a copy of their holy book, halal or kosher food, a mosque or church or temple you can drive them to. Ask about festivals before they arrive rather than the day after. Bring their language into the house through books and films, taking a recommendation from someone who speaks it.

One line of caution. If a young person decides they do not want to follow the faith they grew up in, that is not a decision you take with them privately; tell your supervising social worker and work it through with the team. The same goes for tracing family: follow the child’s lead and let the professionals do the searching.

The asylum process, and your small but real part in it

You are not the child’s legal representative and will never be asked to be. But you will be in the room for some of it, and knowing the shape of the process makes it far less frightening. According to Home Office caseworker guidance current in August 2026:

• a welfare interview happens early on, covering immediate needs and any trafficking concerns rather than the substance of the claim
• fingerprints and a photograph are taken, and the child is issued with an Application Registration Card, which acts as their ID
• the local authority completes a Statement of Evidence Form covering identity, language needs and any safeguarding concerns
• where a substantive interview about the claim is needed, an independent responsible adult must attend, and that adult can be you
• if the Home Office or the local authority doubts a young person’s age, an age assessment may follow, now often through the National Age Assessment Board
• where a claim succeeds, unaccompanied children are normally granted five years’ permission to stay, which is longer than the 30 months that became standard for adults for claims lodged on or after 2 March 2026

Your job through all of it is to be the steady adult: get them there, sit with them, take them for chips afterwards, and write down what happened for the record. Do not coach a child on what to say. And if a claim is refused and they talk about running, do not help them plan it. Say plainly that you can’t, tell the social worker, and stay on their side while they and their solicitor deal with the appeal.

What you are paid

At GLF the rate is the same as for any other child: £479.50 a week for a child under 11 and £507.50 a week for a child aged 11 or over, paid per child and only while a child is living with you. Where a young person’s needs are higher there is an enhanced fee, usually £100 to £200 a week on top, agreed case by case. It is one fixed weekly fee covering both the child’s allowance and your reward, with no separate one-off payments for birthdays or Christmas. We set out the detail on how foster carer pay works, including how Qualifying Care Relief usually keeps most of it out of tax.

Then they turn 18

Most unaccompanied children arrive as teenagers, so eighteen comes round fast and it arrives loaded: immigration status, college, money, housing, all at once. Many young people carry on living with their carer under Staying Put, usually the kindest option available, though it is a different arrangement with different funding rather than fostering extended. Building practical skills before that birthday matters, which is the subject of our piece on preparing a young person for independence.

You won’t have to do this alone

Nobody does this from a standing start. You would have a supervising social worker who knows you and the young person, someone on the end of the phone out of hours, training that covers trauma, exploitation and caring for a child from another country, and other GLF carers who will tell you the truth about the first month. Ofsted inspected us from 21 to 25 July 2025 and rated GLF Outstanding in all three judgements. What earns that is carers being properly supported on a Tuesday night when something has gone wrong. You are allowed to find this hard, and allowed to ring us and say so.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to speak the child’s language?

No. Almost no carer does. The first couple of weeks run on pictures, gestures, translation apps and cooking together, and free English classes usually start soon after. What matters far more is that you are patient with silence and don’t fill it by talking louder.

Can I do this if I have never fostered before?

Yes, and plenty of people do. You would be assessed and trained like any other carer, including the Skills to Foster course, and we would talk through with you whether an unaccompanied teenager is the right first placement for your household. Some people are better suited to that than to a five-year-old. It is a conversation, not a test.

Will I have to go to Home Office interviews?

Possibly. Where a substantive asylum interview is needed, an independent responsible adult has to be there, and a foster carer is one of the people who can do it. You are there as a familiar face, not as an advocate. The child’s legal representative handles the legal side.

What happens when they turn 18?

The fostering placement ends at eighteen, but the relationship usually doesn’t. Many young people stay on under Staying Put until they are 21, on different terms and different funding, and they keep a Personal Adviser from the local authority as a care leaver. Immigration status is a separate question and one for their solicitor.