Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate her Department has made of the number of children who need support to apply for Settled Status and who do not have a parent to complete the process for them.

The Home Office made some broad initial estimates of the numbers of children in care and care leavers who may be eligible for status under the EU Settlement Scheme. In the absence of local authority data on the nationality of children coming into care, these were based on a range of input from interested parties such as Department for Education, MHCLG, LGA and representations from the devolved administrations, but broadly based on data from the Office for National Statistics. The resulting figures – of around 5,000 children in care and 4,000 care leavers – provided a reasonably generous basis for the new burdens’ assessment, from which additional funding was provided to relevant local authorities.

The Home Office has recently conducted a survey of local authorities across the UK as part of the support it is offering to them with this important work. With over 90% of local authorities having so far responded to the survey, the emerging picture is actual volumes of eligible cases are significantly lower than the overall estimate of 9,000.

Returns to date have so far identified fewer than 4,000 children in care and care leavers eligible for the EU Settlement Scheme.