Background Unaccompanied minors are children who travel or enter a host country alone or separated from their parents. Working with this group of children requires a high level of competence to make sure that the care they are receving is of good quality.

Aim The aim of this study is to describe staff competence in designated residential centres for unaccompanied minors seeking asylum.

Method The used method is of quantitative design utilizing an anonymous Internet based survey.

Results The results show that the personal working with asylum seeking children generally has education combined with a considerably low level of experience. Majority of participants expressed the need of further education.

Conclusion While earlier reports suggested that personal working with asylum seeking children in Sweden has low competence, our results show that today most of the personal has higher education however still only one-two years of experience.