YOUNG refugees displaced by war and with “horrific backstories” are now able to enjoy a better life in Fife.

And more children coming into the UK without their parents could be housed and supported in the Kingdom after the local authority agreed to volunteer its services to the Home Office.

Fife Council will write to Cosla to offer extra support after it volunteered last summer to take in four children aged between 10 and 12 who had been displaced from their home countries.

Head of children’s services, Kathy Henwood, said the four youngsters, all boys, were “experiencing success” and have been given care, education and health support without a negative impact on existing council resources. This has opened the way to allowing more unaccompanied young people to come here to live – though she said this would not be “a high number of young people per year”.

“We’ve now got a good evidence base of working across the Fife partnership in supporting young people we take in and in supporting families,” Ms Henwood told councillors last week.

“We recognise there is a growing need and Fife has a place to offer support to other young people in these circumstances, in a way that can be managed while recognising the pressures we face in Fife on resources.”

The Home Office operates an “asylum seeker dispersal scheme” to distribute refugees across the UK as and when they arrive in the country while permanent accommodation is found.

The programme is designed to relieve pressure on councils in the south-east of England, where the majority of asylum seekers arrive, and is entirely voluntary.

Several councils in that area of England declared emergencies last year due to a rise in the number of boats making Channel crossings from mainland Europe.

Care costs can run into millions of pounds, but the Home Office has offered “enhanced” financial assistance to councils that are willing to take in unaccompanied children.

Ms Henwood added: “There’s a lot of work undertaken with these individual children, and anyone sisters or brothers come with, to look at what prompted them to undertake an incredibly dangerous trip in a small boat across the Channel.

“There are lots of assumptions we might make around that but what we do know is that these young people absolutely have horrific backstories and very much welcome any support we can offer them.

“What we’ve been able to do in Fife is support these young people in a meaningful way and enable them to live lives that they would have wished for rather than what might have been facing them in their country of origin or through their journey to get to us.”

Councillors agreed to allow Fife to expand its offering for unaccompanied young asylum seekers after being satisfied that it could cope with the additional demand.

Inverkeithing and Dalgety Bay councillor Dave Dempsey said: “I have no quibble with the proposal here whatsoever. I don’t think any of us can fully comprehend how awful the situation is in Syria and other places.”

Following a lull in spring 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic gripped the world, applications for asylum in the UK from unaccompanied children have boomed, with over 1,500 applications made in the second half of last year.

As of the end of 2019 Fife had accepted 138 refugees of all ages displaced by the ongoing Syria conflict as part of the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS), the UK Government’s pledge to rehome 20,000 displaced Syrians across the country.

Last year councillors were told the cost would range from £865,280 for a council foster care placement, to £5.8m for a purchased residential care placement.

At the time, Councillor Judy Hamilton said: “I’m very proud that we are able to consider opportunity to welcome some unaccompanied children, who are displaced by war, to Fife. They are some of the most vulnerable people in the world and it is the right thing for Fife to play our part in supporting them.”