To ask the Minister of Education to detail what support her Department is providing to asylum seeking children and their families who are being accommodated in contingency accommodation.

My Department works alongside the Education Authority’s (EA) Intercultural Education Service (IES) to provide support to asylum seeking children living in contingency accommodation in Northern Ireland.

The IES’s role is primarily to provide educational advice and support through a small team of teaching and social work qualified staff. The team is experienced around escalating any child protection or safeguarding concerns which they might observe when visiting the accommodation centres.

Since August 2021, the EA has responded to the unprecedented increase in numbers of asylum seeking school-age children living in contingency accommodation by offering a varied complement of provision including welcome clubs for primary and post primary pupils; laptops and Wi-Fi connections; English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) classes; assistance with school registration, free school meals, uniform grants and transport applications; arranging visits by Educational Psychology staff; and making statutory assessment referrals where necessary. The EA has also supported children in the NI Libraries’ weekly stories and craft sessions and Barnardo’s twice weekly ‘learning through play’ sessions in one of the contingency accommodations.

In addition my Department and the IES have provided online ESOL courses for asylum seeking children aged 16-18 who are not enrolled at a school or college of further or higher education.