Getting Home Office approval and arranging the transfer In order for the Home Office to accept a take Case study charge request, proof of the family link must be provided – this includes official papers (birth “One 14-year-old boy from Afghanistan was certificates, passports etc), as well as family completely undocumented, as so many photos, records of communication, corroboration are. He’d been in the camp for nine months between family members’ asylum interviews and when we began working with him, and his other forms of evidence. Voluntary organisations older brother was in the UK, though they are getting pro bono support from lawyers to hadn’t seen one another for ten years. The assist in this task. Understandably, for children Home Office disputed their family link as the who have undertaken long and dangerous older brother hadn’t mentioned his younger journeys – including from conflict zones – access sibling in his own asylum application to the to paperwork and records can be difficult. UK, and demanded a DNA test. This was Pro bono lawyers spend on average “15 to 40 before the courts had ruled that a child can hours per straightforward case”, interviewing be brought to the UK for DNA testing, and children with the help of voluntary interpreters the boy was so frustrated at the length of the – more complex cases, such as those where wait, he travelled illegally via the Eurotunnel items of paperwork is missing, can take much – thankfully, he made it alive.” Voluntary longer. The most difficult conversations are those organisation member in Calais in which a lawyer has to tell a child that there is little hope of his or her case working out – not In some cases, the Home Office has not because they do not have a family member or responded to take charge requests, leading to a legitimate legal case, but because convincing voluntary organisations, including the Red Cross, the authorities of the relation will simply be too to chase them up. In other cases, the Home difficult. Sometimes the Home Office deems the Office has accepted the request, but there are evidence insufficient and requests a DNA test. no ad hoc administrators available to let the child However, these are illegal in France without a know as per France’s regulations, and it is again court order11, and voluntary organisations lack up to voluntary organisations to follow up. the time, funds and legal resources to go through Once the request has been accepted and the process of gaining judicial approval, making the child is informed, the British and French DNA evidence almost impossible to obtain. Safe authorities have up to six months (in the Passage UK successfully litigated against the 13 Home Office, winning their case to have one legislation ) to arrange the transfer, though child applicant transferred to the UK and put into some people we spoke to understood the care while the DNA test took place in Britain, French Government’s policy to be closer to three and hopes that this will set a precedent for future months. As well as booking the train ticket, 12 an ad hoc administrator must take the child cases . Other reasons for rejection include to the station and an OFII staff member must administrative errors, as outlined previously, or accompany him or her on the journey; translators delaying a response in order to conduct a social are not provided as a matter of course, but assessment of the relative’s home in the UK. voluntary organisations are supplying these. Meanwhile, children are left vulnerable in the Upon arriving at St Pancras International, a room ‘Jungle’ for further weeks and months. must be made available in which the child’s fingerprints are taken and they can make their asylum application. Lining up all these resource requirements can mean waits of weeks or months for transfer. While they wait, these are children not in safe accommodation; instead, No place for children 10