Some young people in care are being failed and allowed to become “invisible” to the services which should be supporting them, the Children’s Commissioner has said.
More than 1,000 school-age children in England who had been in care for at least four weeks as of March last year were missing from school, research shows.
The research suggested that some groups of children with vulnerabilities were more likely to be out of school, including unaccompanied children seeking asylum.
More than a fifth (21%) of school-age unaccompanied children seeking asylum (UCSA) were not in school as of March last year.
This compared with 2% of non-UCSA looked-after children who were not in school.
Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza said while the numbers are small, that makes it “all the more shocking that we are allowing children in care to be failed like this”.
