UCL Researchers and ECPAT UK Report Links Housing Lone Children in Home Office Child Hotels to Increased Risks of Trafficking and Exploitation

The report, published today, aimed to investigate the risks of trafficking and exploitation among children seeking asylum in the UK by interviewing the young people themselves as well as professionals involved in their care, such as social workers, policy stakeholders, academics, lawyers, law enforcement, support workers, and NGO staff.

These hotels closed in January following a High Court ruling in a case brought by ECPAT UK deeming them unlawful. During their operation, 440 children went missing, with 144 still not found by November last year, including a 12-year-old boy, and 118 still missing when last reported in March.

The child hotels were described by children as feeling like a “jail”, with some children left in them for several months despite the Home Office commitment to only use them for emergency purposes and never for longer than two weeks. One young girl described her friends’ experiences in the hotels, saying it was “too difficult for them and for their mental health”.

The researchers concluded that the professionals interviewed “felt it obvious that if vulnerable children with potential trafficking ties are crammed into a publicly announced, easily identifiable hotel upon arrival in the UK, it provides an easy target for traffickers seeking to find and exploit these children”.

A former Home Office hotel worker confirmed that he had heard of three trafficking incidents from hotels. Traffickers contact the young people “via a fake account or Facebook… [It] is not that they are naive but when in such a bad situation, I think they think, ‘OK, it’s the risk but this place is also bad’.”

The Home Office hotel worker also described a so-called “safety protocol” where hotel staff were instructed to knock on the doors of children for hourly checks of specific nationalities deemed to be of particular high risk of going missing – such as children from Albania. This meant that every hour throughout the night they would check that the children were still there and report any missing incidents quickly. “Ironically,” the worker said, “[this was] the reason that most kids went missing.”

The hotels for children have closed, but the researchers found a widespread view among interviewees that some children seeking asylum were being incorrectly assessed as adults and placed in adult hotels where they face even higher risks of abuse and exploitation than they did in the Home Office children’s hotels now deemed unlawful.

Several interviewees in the study highlighted the safeguarding risks with the hotels, emphasising that the adult hotels came with the additional layer of children having to share rooms with traumatised adults. Many explained that this increased the risk of sexual abuse and exploitation.

The researchers found that Albanian boys were particularly vulnerable, making up a large proportion of the children who went missing from hotels. One social worker, referred to as Lena*, explained that Albanian boys were “very vulnerable, very frightened”, due to a “targeted campaign against Albanian asylum seekers” and the fear that they may be sent back home imminently. These boys had often survived traumatic journeys, such as Floreste* who was interviewed in the study, and explained:

“We got out in the sea, we got like in the night time like we stayed like about eight or nine hours in the sea /…/ they came and/…/sen[t] us to like the army /…/underage children, they just send us to the hotels, you know,”

Lead author and Principal Investigator Dr Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson (UCL Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction) said: “This is a national scandal which must not be repeated. It is still not clear if the children who disappeared have been found, nor what attempts have been made to find those who remain missing and make sure that they are safe. Adding to this, children who are incorrectly determined as adults are deprived of their rights to education, protection and safeguarding as well as not to be detained, or deported according to domestic law.

“Once placed in adult hotels, the risks posed to their welfare are even more serious than those that existed in the child hotels – the additional risk factors include having to share rooms with highly traumatised and sometimes suicidal adults. These vulnerable children may be taken advantage of, including for sexual or criminal purposes by people sharing a room with them and also by staff members. No young person should be put in an adult hotel if there is any uncertainty about whether they are below 18.”

CEO Patricia Durr, at Every Child Protected Against Trafficking UK (ECPAT UK), said: “We warned authorities from day one about the risk they pose to unaccompanied children – given their increased vulnerability to exploitation and raised the alarm about children going missing. Despite these warnings, the practice continued for years and ended only when our small organisation took both the Home Office and Kent County Council to court, with the practice deemed unlawful.

“This research confirms our fears and emphasises the need for urgent action to find the missing children and a statutory independent inquiry to ensure this child protection scandal never happens again. We also urge the new government to urgently tackle the chronic funding crisis facing children’s social care. We remain concerned about the powers in the Illegal Migration Act, which are not yet in force and would allow the Home Office to directly provide accommodation for unaccompanied children. The new government must commit to repealing this catastrophic legislation which will undermine the rights of children and increase their vulnerability to abuse.”

The UK Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Eleanor Lyons, said: “In the UK we are seeing record numbers of children and young people being exploited. Ruthless criminals are exploiting vulnerable children, forcing them to transport drugs in ‘county lines’, using them to hold money in their bank accounts to avoid money laundering detection, and making them carry out acts of violence. This must change.

“All children should be in safe, loving, caring environments free from exploitation and harm. This research rightly calls for more to be done now to make sure that we are protecting children from exploitation, ensuring children’s services can wrap-care around children in need, and make sure that all children are in safe accommodation.

“Everything must be done to make sure we are preventing children from exploitation and protecting young boys and girls from criminals inflicting harm. And we must do all we can to hold the perpetrators of these horrific crimes to account.”

The study involved researchers from UCL’s Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction, UCL’s Department of Security and Crime Science, and ECPAT UK.

The research was funded by the Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre (Modern Slavery PEC), which in turn is funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).