They are then referred to the local social services authority, Hillingdon, which will provide them with subsistence payments, accommodation and other essential help.
Most are aged 16 or 17 when they arrive and they continue to be assisted by the council until they are 18. Responsibility for their support then passes to the National Asylum Support Service (NASS) – if they are still seeking asylum – or the welfare benefits agencies if permission to stay has been granted.
In this case, B and a number of other young refugees and asylum seekers, who had been helped by Hillingdon but who had since turned 18, claimed that the council owed a continuing duty to them as "care leavers" and also that they had "priority need" when homeless.
The council said the young people had not been "looked after", which is the qualifying condition for the new category of priority need for young people up to 21. It also declined to give them the usual after-care package for the same reason.
In a judicial review, the judge decided that each of them had been "looked after" by the council for more than 13 weeks before turning 18. He said Hillingdon had accepted that they were children in need, requiring accommodation, and that it had provided them with that accommodation (in private hostels and other B&B-style units). That was sufficient to make them "looked after". He granted declarations that they were all in priority need.
Source
Housing Today
Reference
Housing authorities will want to carefully reconsider recent negative priority need decisions issued to former unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, now aged under 21, since the category was introduced in July 2002. In particular, cases in which social services advised that the young people were "assisted" rather than "accommodated" will require careful scrutiny.
