How can this be achieved?
• By ensuring that guardians are responsible for a reasonable number of unaccompanied and separated children at any given time 5 so that they are able to perform their duties effectively. To this purpose, States should allocate sufficient human and financial resources. The Scottish Guardianship Service offers a good model of how guardians can be enabled to support unaccompanied and separated children.
• By ensuring that guardians are immediately appointed, appropriately trained, supported and monitored. Training should apply the same standards as for the education and child rights training of professionals working with children in the alternative care system. Guardians should be employed so that each child can have a qualified and skilled guardian 6. Professional guardians could be supported by volunteer guardians to increase quality and support for children. The practice from North-Rhine Westfalia( Germany) shows that volunteer guardians often extend their role by supporting children in all aspects of their daily life using their personal, private and professional networks to support the children. The time devoted to the unaccompanied child, the frequency of personal meetings and the personal involvement of the volunteer guardian in their daily life allows for the development of a strong personal and trustful relationship. Furthermore, they often continue supporting young people after they reach the age of 18, when the legal guardianship ends.
• By making sure that children are able to contact their guardian easily 7, including beyond office hours 8.
4. END THE MIGRATION DETENTION OF CHILDREN
Despite its profoundly negative impact on children’ s health and psychosocial development, EU legislation allows the detention of children in the context of migration in exceptional circumstances, as a matter of last resort, and if it has been established that other less coercive alternative measures cannot be applied effectively. In practice, while many European countries do not collect or make public the numbers, length and grounds for the detention of migrant children, detention is a reality for too many migrant children in Europe.
Children should never be detained for reasons related to their or their parents or care givers’ migration status. The Committee on the Rights of the Child has asserted that the detention of any child because of their or their parents’ migration status constitutes a child rights violation and contravenes the principle of
5 _ In Year 1 of the evaluation of the Scottish Guardianship Service Pilot, the average caseload per Guardian was 6.2. In Year 2 the average caseload for each Guardian increased to 13.3, as the numbers of young people using the Service grew. See Heaven Crawley, Ravi KS Kohli,“’ She endures with me’. An evaluation of the Scottish Guardianship Service Pilot”, 2013, http:// www. scottishrefugeecouncil. org. uk / assets / 0000 / 6798 / Final _ Report _ 2108. pdf. In the framework of the recast negotiations of the Reception Conditions Directive( Directive 2013 / 33 / EU on laying down standards for the reception of applicants for international protection), the European Parliament recommends that guardians may not be in charge of more than 20 unaccompanied children. 6 _“ Guardianship for Children Deprived of Parental Care”, European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2014. 7 _ A 12 year’ s old unaccompanied child from Afghanistan living in Hungary, interviewed by SOS Children’ s Villages Hungary said:“ Actually I can’ t count on anybody, and I don’ t really trust anybody either. I have a legal guardian, but I don’ t know either his telephone number or his Viber name, so I can’ t talk to him whenever I want.”.
8 _ Ibid.
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