Policy and Legal Implications for Working with Unaccompanied Immigrant Children in Foster Care in the United States

Abstract

Unaccompanied immigrant children arrive in the US having fled deteriorating conditions and human rights violations in their home countries. Despite the large numbers of unaccompanied children, there is a lack of research on outcomes for unaccompanied children in the US and particularly for those in the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s (ORR) Long Term Foster Care (LTFC) program. This manuscript begins with a review of the existing laws that influence unaccompanied children (UC) served through the ORR’s LTFC program and a review of the current research on UC in foster care in the US. Notably, this manuscript also visualizes the numbers of UC that have arrived in the US since the early 2000s. These are used to provide a synthesis of recommendations for policy and practice with unaccompanied children.

Keywords

• unaccompanied child
• immigrant
• undocumented
• human rights
• foster care
• policy