Place to Call Home Project Evaluation Report: Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children, Foster Care and Supported Lodgings Placements in the East Midlands
This is the evaluation report of the Place to Call Home Project. It looks at how the Project was
designed, adjusted in response to government restrictions in relation to Covid and whether its
operationalisation achieved the key priorities set out in this report.
Funded through the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG),
Controlling Migration Fund (CMF), East Midlands Strategic Migration Partnership (EMSMP)
sought to increase its regional in-house foster care and supported lodgings provision for
Unaccompanied asylum seeking children and young people. Demands on local provision have
increased significantly with an increase in the number arriving to the region and will continue
as the National Transfer Scheme (NTS) became mandatory on 14th December 2021 (Home
Office, 2022). Of concern has been the resourcing of appropriate care provision for this cohort
of Looked After Children (LAC), which the East Midlands Councils (EMC) found to be
problematic in its report ‘Analysis of the Local Authority Costs incurred in support of
Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking children in the East Midlands’ (2017). The cost of providing
care or support to UASC and young people in the region outweighed the sum received from
the government for this purpose by £25,000 per UASC, not least because local authorities had
to rely on independent care provision at a far greater cost than in-house placements.
With this in mind 9 local East Midlands local authorities: Derby City Council, Derbyshire County
Council, Leicester City Council, Leicestershire County Council, Lincolnshire County Council,
Northamptonshire County Council, Nottingham City Council, Nottinghamshire County Council,
Rutland County Council sought funding from the national CMF which would help them to set
up a regional co-ordination team that spearheaded a recruitment campaign, specialised UASC
foster care and supported lodgings training in order to develop the regional capacity of inhouse care provision in the East Midlands.
This report focuses on the current literature relating to the care provision of UASC and
experiences of and support for individuals who foster or provide supported lodgings to this
complex group of LAC. In setting out the current concerns raised by the literature it will
highlight the challenges that the Place to Call Home Project sought to address as it attracted
potential applicants and then worked with them through the assessment process, delivering
specialist training.
Findings will be reported on the key stages of the process: the recruitment campaign, the
assessment process and the training. Highlighted will be some important lessons that can be
used to inform future funding of UASC foster care provision.
The key summary findings are:
The number of Foster Care Placement Approvals were: 41
The number of Supported Lodging Provider Approvals were: 4
37.57% of completed initial enquiries to the project were with people with BAME backgrounds
83.3% of enquirers were interested in working specifically with migrant children
28 prospective carers participated in the specialist UASC training that was developed by the
project; overall their evaluations of the training were very positive
Regional Co-ordination has been challenging to set up and should be continued to ensure the
sustainability of the Projec
