UK pauses visas for unaccompanied Ukrainian children over 'safeguarding' issues

Government criticised for 'cruel' rules that exclude some unaccompanied child refugees

Supporters join a group of would-be hosts, sponsors and supporters of Ukrainian refugees outside the Home Office in London. PA.

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The UK government has paused visa applications for unaccompanied minors fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine because it still has not decided how to deal with such applications, an immigration lawyer has said.

Current government advice for the Homes For Ukraine initiative states that under-18s “must be applying as part of a family unit, which includes their parent or legal guardian”, to be eligible.

But this guidance did not appear on the official gov.uk website until the middle of April, some weeks after the programme went live on March 18. It led to confusion and accusations of a “national scandal” because the Home Office had moved the goalposts.

Mala Savjani, an immigration solicitor for the Here For Good charity based at Wilson Solicitors LLP, told the PA news agency: “We have been seeing applications from unaccompanied minors being paused and not decided, especially ones that were submitted in the second half of March, and we would have absolutely expected decisions on those applications by now.

“It seems as though the Home Office is purposefully not making those decisions because they haven’t actually decided how to deal with those applications.”

Several UK citizens' attempts to offer homes to unaccompanied minors have stalled. Those affected have described the government’s approach as “beyond cruel”.

Julie Elliot, 62, hopes to welcome refugee Timothy Tymoshenko, 16, who is severely autistic and non-verbal.

Ms Elliot and her husband Roger, 66, have 14 children together — four biological and 10 adopted.

Their adopted children all have disabilities and eight of them still live at the couple’s home in Ribble Valley, Lancashire.

The pair worked as nurses before becoming full-time carers to their adopted family, being made MBEs in 2016 for services rendered to children.

Ms Elliot has now been made Timothy’s legal guardian by his mother, Anna, and is considering travelling to Ukraine to care for Timothy as she has been given no update on his visa application made on March 30.

“Why offer with one hand and take it away with the other? It is beyond cruel,” Ms Elliot said of the government’s policy.

“It would have been kinder not to offer and then all of these people could have found refuge in other places.”

Ms Elliot said Timothy’s mother was “getting to the end of being able to cope now”.

“One of two things is going to happen to Tim,” she added.

“Either Anna’s going to crack and he’s going to have to go to one of these institutions, which there aren’t any left now because of the war. Or he is going to be dead under a pile of stones and I can’t let that happen to him, I can’t.”

Dr Catherine Hillman, 45, a consultant obstetrician at Worcestershire Royal Hospital, is attempting to bring two teenagers, whose mothers cannot leave Kyiv because they are medical professionals, to the UK.

She helped to secure bursary places for the children, Ivan, 14, and Daria, 15, at Cheltenham College, while her parents have signed up to act as guardians for the pair.

But despite having all the paperwork completed, including written consent from the children’s parents, and submitting the visa request on April 12 — the date the guidance on gov.uk was updated, as shown by older versions of the web page on the Wayback Machine internet archive — they are still waiting to hear back.

“We applied for their visas what feels like 300 years ago and still have not received anything,” Dr Hillman said.

“We have just had the most appalling difficulty. I mean, it has been smoke and mirrors; we have no idea what the truth of the matter is.”

Dr Hillman, who lives in north Gloucestershire, said she has written to “everyone I can think of, including Lord Harrington”, but to no avail.

A UK government representative cited “safeguarding concerns” as the reason unaccompanied minors are not being approved for the programme.

But Ms Savjani said: “You have got unaccompanied children who are alone, stuck in different cities and towns across Europe, who are not with their parents, and in some cases have been separated from their friends.

“They have very limited funds available to them. But they have been offered a safe home to live in, in the UK, which has been checked by the local authorities, and the sponsor has had a DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) check completed.

“It is a bit of a contradiction to say it is a safeguarding issue, isn’t it?”

Here For Good, which was set up to provide free immigration advice to vulnerable EU citizens in the UK after Brexit, has been helping with applications from Ukrainian citizens since the invasion began.

Ms Savjani said the Ukraine system is functioning similarly to other cases she has worked on, in that it is “a system that works for some and not for others, with limited transparency”.

Dr Hillman said the government has a “moral imperative to address this issue” and believes it is a “national scandal” that it has not done so.

“They are just placing roadblocks all the way along with an inconsistency of message as to how you should approach this problem, what you should do,” she said.

“And without any clarity, you are left floundering, having promised people that you would be able to help them when they are in the very worst of circumstances.

“And personally, if that was my child, I would be appalled to be on the receiving end of such a ‘welcome’.”

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