Editorial.

The article focuses on the lives and circumstances of refugee and asylum seeking children and families in several countries, Australia, Ireland, Norway and Great Britain. The predominant focus is on unaccompanied or separated children who come to these countries without an adult to look after them. But equally importantly, many children are accompanied by adult family members who seek asylum, and sometimes achieve their goal of full refugee status. It shares a humanism which assumes that an urgent welfare task is to bring justice to the lives of those who have had to flee their countries of origin, and that justice has ethical dimensions, not just legal ones. Particularly in a climate of distrust of people seeking asylum, where the "something must be done" brigade charges towards battening down the hatches, it must be done to protect and care for asylum seekers and refugees.