Councils risk breaching their legal duty to care for unaccompanied child asylum-seekers, if a Home Office agency goes ahead with plans to slash devolved support budgets, a leading social worker union has warned.

Unison general secretary, Dave Prentis, this week wrote to the UK Border Agency (UKBA), a Home Office offshoot, urging it not to proceed with plans to cut the level of funding it handed to local authorities to care for child asylum-seekers.