Arrived, but not safe?

Children are independent legal entities with individual needs, experiences, and perspectives. It is therefore important to familiarize oneself with children's rights and their implications for refugee minors, to discuss this within the team, and to actively consider these rights in practice.

Children need safe spaces and consistent protection from violence and neglect. Teachers and professionals must recognize physical, psychological, and sexual violence, take it seriously, and act accordingly. Violence prevention and child protection policies in institutions must not only exist formally but must be actively practiced and continuously reviewed. Relationships based on trust and stability are a fundamental protective factor for children with refugee experiences. Building and maintaining these relationships requires time, attention, and a trauma-informed approach.

Teachers and professionals play a crucial role in recognizing psychological distress and referring young people to support services. Information about available resources and assistance should be readily available, even for those with uncertain immigration status. Early signs of trauma-related disorders must be taken seriously. Psychological reactions can be understood as coping mechanisms in highly stressful situations. Training in trauma-informed practices can help develop appropriate responses.

An important contribution lies in enabling effective participation. Refugee children and young people should be involved in decisions that affect them. Teachers and professionals can create and promote age-appropriate participation formats in which young people can express their opinions without fear and experience self-efficacy.

Volunteers, teachers, and professionals are called upon to confront discrimination and racism – both in their interactions with refugee families and within institutional contexts. This means reflecting on their own attitudes and professional structures, identifying racist or discriminatory incidents, and taking action against them. In this way, they can assume an ally role, support empowerment, and strengthen children and young people.

Much can be achieved when various stakeholders exchange ideas with each other in local networks: for example, schools, healthcare, youth services, volunteers, and migrant self-organizations. Together, gaps can be identified, transitions can be better managed, and resources can be pooled to intervene more effectively.

Teachers and professionals play a crucial role: they witness systemic failures, resource deficiencies, and violations of human and children's rights. They can contribute these experiences to professional, public, and political debates. Their expertise helps initiate improvements and demand human rights-based standards. Even though individual agency is limited, attitude, knowledge, and commitment can all contribute to empowering refugee children.

1. Significantly expand legal entry options. Current border control policies ignore the fact that there are hardly any legal escape routes for fleeing in emergencies. This forces people to choose dangerous, “irregular” routes. Humanitarian admission programs, resettlement, and simplified family reunification procedures, especially for unaccompanied minors and siblings, must be urgently expanded to protect children and young people.

2. Provide reliable prospects for all children and young people seeking protection to remain in the country – regardless of their country of origin or residency status. Uncertainty and fear of deportation or asylum procedures retraumatize and hinder integration. Safety and protection are prerequisites for healthy development. Therefore, asylum procedures must be consistently geared towards the protection of refugee children and young people – which, unfortunately, is often not the case in practice.

3. Accommodation must be non-violent, child-friendly, and decentralized. Many refugee children and young people report violence, neglect, and a lack of protection in their accommodations. As a preventative measure, all accommodations must be required to have functioning and regularly reviewed concepts for violence prevention and child protection. Children must not live in collective accommodations for months or years. They need privacy, stability, access to support, and educational and psychosocial services.

4. Protection from discrimination and trauma-informed professionals. Exclusion, institutional racism, and lack of access to health, education, and other children's rights are forms of structural violence from which children and young people must be effectively protected. This also requires a greater number of interdisciplinary trained professionals who are sensitive to discrimination and trauma in youth services, schools, healthcare, and the justice system.

5. Ensure needs-based and comprehensive psychosocial care. Access to psychosocial and therapeutic support must not depend on residency status. Low-threshold and free services for children and families are needed, as well as sustainable funding for specialized facilities (e.g., psychosocial centers) by the federal and state governments. Language interpretation in therapy and counseling must be enshrined in law and publicly funded. Systematic procedures for assessing needs (in schools, daycare centers, and accommodations) with clear referral pathways are necessary; deportations despite documented mental illness must be prevented.

6. Guarantee access to education and childcare. Daycare centers, schools, vocational training institutions, and universities must be open regardless of residency status. Bureaucratic hurdles and a lack of places must not result in children being out of school for months. Schools need resources, professional development and concepts for trauma-informed teaching, as well as flexible learning formats, school social work, and support services to prevent school dropouts.

7. Strengthen participation and opportunities for self-efficacy. Children and young people who have experienced violence and displacement need spaces where they can express themselves, make their voices heard, and experience self-efficacy. The right to participate in decision-making must be consistently implemented. Targeted support for empowerment programs (e.g., peer projects, creative group formats, or leisure activities) is needed to strengthen self-confidence and social participation.