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An fascinating article about a subject that stupidly ignored. This should be treated as the scandal it really is. I cannot understand why after staying in this country throughout much of their later childhood, nationality is still denied. Surely, even from the economic point of view allowing grown up children who've been through the care system should be given the chance to work so as to pay back the casts involved. Though, of course, humanitarian concerns should be sole criterion used and not simply economic benefit. But, thankfully Dr Holman has again highlighted an issue that needs more attention.

Here’s another slant on the ‘typical asylum seeking children’. Official figures - which are likely to be an underestimate - show that every year, 5,500 foreign children turn up in this country, apparently with no one to care for them. At Britain's busiest asylum centre in Croydon, South London, 20 lone children arrive each week, claiming refuge. In a busy month, 500 can be interviewed. Scores of the youngsters also walk off planes - some with handwritten notes, supposedly from their parents, hanging round their necks. The messages state that they can pass through immigration because friends or family are waiting on the other side to collect them - a claim that often turns out to be untrue. The number of foreign children landing in Dover on ferries from France is now so high that a police child protection officer has been put on duty at the port. Dozens more flood into London at Victoria and St Pancras stations, where buses and trains arrive from the Continent. Detective Inspector Gordon Valentine, of Scotland Yard's Paladin team, which debriefs the arrivals as part of London's Child Abuse Investigation Command, quoted the case of Victoria Climbie, the eight-year-old girl smuggled to Britain from the Ivory Coast by her great-aunt to claim state handouts and free housing (worth a total of £2,000 a month). "There is a lot of money available if you have a child in tow,' adds Detective Inspector Valentine. "You jump to the top of the council housing queue for a start." Denise Marshall, chief executive of The Poppy Project - a charity which helps female trafficking victims - confirms that welfare benefits are a real lure. She says: "But the child often drops off the radar. They don't go to school, they are never seen outside the house, no one knows what is happening to them. During this investigation, I spoke to social workers, National Health Service nurses, the police and children's charities. Everyone agreed that child smuggling into Britain is a growing problem. A social worker from Lambeth, South London, described one family who turned up at her office begging for a big council house, because they had such a large family. They had seven children with them, including a girl with pink ribbons in her braided hair. The next day, another family came in asking for a house and again with several children under ten - one of which was the same girl with pink ribbons. A social worker spotted her and a police investigation was launched. The girl's true identity has still not been determined and she is now in care. The social worker said: "This girl, and many others, are trafficked here and then passed like parcels between adults who claim them as their own to get family benefits." Meanwhile, a Manchester nurse told a similar story. "In the A&E department of my hospital, children are often brought in by couples who claim to be their parents. "But the child's body language, the attitude of the mother, even the brusque behaviour of the father, tells you that this cannot be. Above all, they show no real concern for their sick child. "The child is not registered with the local GP, so it is brought to casualty instead. "But this happens so regularly we feel we cannot call the police or the social workers every time as we normally have no more evidence than a well-founded suspicion." You only have to watch the daily queues at Lunar House, the asylum screening unit in Croydon, to see the scale of the crisis. While some children are alone, others turn up with adults who concoct stories about their role in the youngster's life. They claim they are an aunt, uncle, adoptive parent or friend. Among the most implausible, yet popular, tales is that they have found the child abandoned on the street and now want to care for him or her themselves. In many cases, the claims are so complex they cannot be verified - even if the overstretched Home Office immigration officials had time to check them. The minute a child applies for asylum, the money starts to flow. The child gets an Applicant Registration Card (ARC) card, which acknowledges their asylum claim and human rights and entitles them to immediate cash support and free health care. As for the adult "carer", they get state support for looking after the child, housing and a guarantee that they, too, can stay in the country until that child is 21. "There are a lot of bonuses to be reaped," says Detective Inspector Valentine. The traffickers use myriad tricks to beat the system. To make it look like the child is an EU citizen, for example, they will route them on a flight from Africa or Asia, via Amsterdam or Paris. Alternatively, if the child is arriving directly from the Third World, they may be told to ignore the accompanying adult - who is often an agent for the smugglers - as soon as they reach the airport terminal. Instead, the youngster will turn up at the immigration desk on their own with a well-rehearsed story. A favourite is that they have come from a war zone, and that both their parents are dead. Such is the desire to get into Britain, that sometimes an entire village will club together to pay agents as much as £20,000 for one child's safe passage. This is a fortune in the Third World but it is also seen as a long-term investment, as those paying for the transit will often share the proceeds of the child's bogus benefit claims. If successful, this could mean thousands of pounds accrued annually until the child reaches the age of 19. A child asylum seeker's benefits can total £200 a week in food, clothing and subsistence payments - quite apart from the housing benefits awarded to their adult "carer". And these payments are sometimes claimed repeatedly by different adults for the same child. According to Christine Beddoe, head of ECPAT UK (a charity campaigning to stop child trafficking), as many as 60per cent of children who are discovered by the authorities, either when they arrive at an airport, or are found in the street, or when they turn up at Lunar House, later go missing from care. Christine says: "Because our system is so appalling and the numbers are so huge, many of these children are never found again. "They may be given another new identity and will be at the mercy of the trafficker or smuggler for years." Even babies are trafficked. Police monitoring the flow of lone children into Heathrow described the case of an African woman who twice brought in two three-month-old babies. She left a hotel in Golders Green, North London as her forwarding address with immigration officials, but when suspicions were raised following her second arrival, she couldn't be traced. The woman had never checked into the hotel and the babies haven't been seen since. In another case, police told me how a man known as "Mr Chang" was arrested by Scotland Yard in Heathrow airport's arrivals hall when he turned up to greet what the authorities worked out was his 100th "nephew" flying in from mainland China.

In all of these horrific senarios, hinted at by Bob Holman and expanded in detail by Dave, it is the children who suffer. The question is how we extract them from these complex situations, and 'look after' them without causing further trauma. Although Glasgow - with over 100 unaccompanied minors in the city - is looking to develop new support services for these youngsters, current provision is woefully inadequate and often compounds the damage