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<p>The Government remains committed to helping and supporting children in need of
international protection. Since 2010, the UK has received over 23,700 asylum claims
from unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC).</p><p>The National Transfer Scheme
(NTS) supports local authorities to transfer responsibility for these children to
another participating local authority and seeks to achieve a fairer allocation of
caring responsibilities across the country so that all children get the care and support
they need.</p><p>We publish data on the number of transfers completed under the scheme
each quarter as part of the Home Office Migration Transparency Data (NTS_01), which
is available on GOV.UK. As at June 2020, over 1,050 children had been transferred
under the scheme since it began. We do not currently publish a nationality breakdown
of those children transferred under the scheme, however these children would be a
subset of the UASC data published as part of the ‘asylum applications, initial decisions
and resettlement’ volume of the quarterly Immigration Statistics (Asy_D01), which
is also available on GOV.UK.</p><p>UASC have often suffered deep trauma and they should
receive the same level of care and support we would expect for any looked after child.
In 2017, we published our Safeguarding Strategy for Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking and
Refugee Children which sets out the Government’s commitments to safeguard and promote
their welfare.</p><p>Whilst there are statutory powers to mandate a transfer scheme,
our preference is to continue to operate the NTS on a voluntary basis. We recognise
a need to achieve a more equitable distribution of UASC and have therefore worked
with local government partners to develop proposals to further improve the scheme.
On 28 August we launched an informal consultation with local authorities on these
proposals. The consultation also seeks views on a potential mandatory approach should
participation in the voluntary scheme not achieve a more proportionate distribution
of UASC.</p>
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