New training for working with Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children encourages ‘practising with care in mind’

A new online course, jointly developed by experts at The Open University and the University of Northampton, is now available for social care professionals who work with Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children (UASC) and separated or lone migrant young people.

The ten-hour course, Practising with care in mind: Learning from professionals and Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children, grew from the findings of the Children Caring on the Move (CCoM) research project, which explored how separated migrant children made sense of care relationships and caring practices.

The research and training sit against a backdrop of rising numbers of children who have been separated from their primary caregivers during migration, as the pandemic, wars in Afghanistan and Ukraine, and recurring natural disasters contribute to a worsening migrant crisis.  

Professor Sarah Crafter of the Open University expanded on the background of the course, saying;

“Our research has shown that unaccompanied young people provide a lot of care for each other, but we wanted to understand what that care looks like – and explore how we might apply those findings to some practice-based training, to have a real-world impact in a professional setting such as social work, or within voluntary organisations that work with asylum seekers and refugees.”

Dr. Evangelia Prokopiou, University of Northampton, added: 

“The course is very much evidence-informed.  We collected data from both young people and adults who have a care connection with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. This data, along with a short digital film developed by the young people themselves, formed the basis of the training.”

The course is free, and can be added it to CPD records for Social Workers, but is available to anyone working in this field. This 10-hour online course, is available via the OpenLearn Create website.