U.K. 'Quietly' announced it won't be taking anymore unaccompanied child refugees

[Motherofhowmany]

Absolutely appalling, we've only resettled 350 of the promised 3000.

I work with some of these children. The things they have seen are horrendous.

www.independent.co.uk/news/only-350-syrian-refugee-children-will-be-allowed-to-settle-in-britain-thousands-less-than-promised-a7569691.html

He could well be older than a good proportion of the teachers.

It was on BBC news 24 hours after I created this thread. It was quietly announced, however enough fuss was made that it became headline news the next day.

Most of them do not go into schools they attend esol courses at college.

You can't force people to become foster carers!
You couldn't pay me enough!

This is probably a triggering question, but why do fostering parents need to be paid to have unaccompanied minors? I thought they were volunteers. Surely they should only get the money parents get for having their own children.

If they are doing it from the kindness of their own heart then fine but bribery is causing issues.

Jujubeanz
I was being facetious.
I agree it is bad but not bad enough it appears for a father to take care of his children.

That is why we should be taking refugees from the camps around Syria (which we are) ie women and children and not the men trying to break in illegally.

But all we see is men sorry boys coming in.

Sixisthemagicnumber I thought the people you were referring to were families. Why would the some be afraid of their own sons.

Anon1234567890 are you for real? Foster 'carers' ( they are not parents) are doing a paid job. It's not a triggering question, it's a stupid question. And what money do parents 'get for having their own children'? Apart from child benefit I certainly didn't get any for my own children.
I think I probably need to report your post as this must surely be a wind up, no one could be this ignorant surely?
Why and how on earth would or could any ordinary person take another human being into their home 'from the kindness of their own heart' ( I do however accept there will always be the Madonna's of the world)
I think you are being very silly

This was the topic been discussed on radio 2.
Opinions given were many of the children were not from Syria but from countries without conflict.
We are not able to cope as there was already too much strain on our resources such as the nhs.
We are the second largest donators of foreign aid in the world.
It is encouraging trafficking.
Personally I think we should help the genuine children and if they have family here already then they will have financial responsibility for them. 3000 is not many at all.

Anon1234567890 reported

Anon, I think you are confusing foster carers with adopters. Adopters are the child's new legal parents, and like other parents they are not paid to love and support their child. Foster carers are not parents - they are professional carers who provide usually short-term support to children who have been taken into care and have not yet been either returned to their birth parents or adopted. They provide therapeutic care on behalf of the state. In many ways more is asked of them than of parents, in that they have a lot of restrictions placed on their lives, they may for example have to take a child on frequent contact visits, have lots of meetings with social workers etc.

Damn right they should be paid - we need them to be highly skilled and subject to professional standards. It is not a job for a volunteer.

anon absolutely foster carers should be paid! After watching my family member foster kid after kid and seeing the mental, physical and emotional toll it took on him at the end after years of dealing with highly damaged and vulnerable children I would say it's a job that should be paid damn well also.

I am just trying to make a separation between those who are doing it as a job and those who voluntarily want to accept refugees into their family, as their own children. I think it makes a big difference.

thisisthereality, why are reporting me?

anon

Adopting and fostering are two completely different things

Adopting and fostering are two completely different things

sure, but isn't the sentiment the same?

Ive name changed here. My reality is fostering around twenty unaccompanied minor 'children' from many different countries for over ten years up until six months ago. The reality is that many of these children are thought to have family in this country. The reality is that they seldom actually get to live with them, if they do it will take many many months to complete the checks required on their families ( maybe rightly so, the Local Authorities need to know for certain that these people are 'suitable', have the right accommodation etc) The reality is that often these 'families', once found, are not actually blood related or do not have the capacity in their home to look after the young person. All this takes a long, long time. In the meantime the 'child' is placed in LA foster care. The foster carers will be paid up to £400 including a fee and maintenance. I've no idea how one would calculate the costs of the SW, health and Education during this period.

Many LA carers are refusing to provide homes for unaccompanied young people now. There are many reasons for this and I can only speak from my own experiences as well as many carers I know from my own LA. ( oh and this then means that the children will be referred to independent fostering associations at a cost of between £750-950 per week)

I'll be perfectly honest and say here that, around 10 years ago when children starting coming from Afghanistan and Eritrea ( although they have always arrived unaccompanied, just not in the numbers that we see now) many carers enjoyed the 'challenge' of having an UM within their homes, me included.
As the years have gone on, the makeup of the children has drastically changed. The reality is that these young people are very very difficult to have within a home. If they present as, e.g., 15, it is very likely they will actually be around 20. If they are actually 15, they are very very different to our own 15 year old children, their life experiences can not be compared, obviously. A 15 year old male from, e.g., Syria, is actually like a fully grown man here.
I have 20 years experience working in various ways with teens, often males. I have experience of drugs, police, courts, living with severe mental health disorders, self harming and suicide attempts ( from local children). but NOTHING would persuade me to ever offer a home again to an unaccompanied child.

My reality is that these 'children' do not actually want to be in a foster home. They certainly do not wish to abide by ordinary family 'rules' and they certainly do not want to integrate into British society. Their one goal is to be within groups of other young people from their own country and culture ( very understandable) However, here they are, at the port, so what do we do? They come into foster care! They stay in foster care until the placement breaks down, they are moved to another foster placement until eventually they are given what they have demanded for that past year, a room in a shared house with other young people ( they may only still be maybe 16!)

So then we have five young, e.g., Eritrean, young people living together in a house rented on behalf of a LA on, for example, a housing estate. These young people are thought to be around16 years old! They speak very little English and do not integrate within the local community, they do not want to. It goes on......

This is the reality. I could actually write a book based on my own experiences of unaccompanied young people living within my home but it wouldn't be believed! However, I do know that there will be other foster carers reading this who will know exactly what I am talking about!

It's actually quite sad that I've felt the need to change my name here and I'll sit back and wait for the back lash. But nothing I've written here is untrue, it is the reality

Excellent post, from someone who knows what really happens .
I suggest everybody reads the above.

Have you any idea of the safeguarding issues to other children within a foster home of having an unknown male ( possible) adult sleeping just down the hallway? And I can assure you that there are few foster families without other children, either birth, Grandchildren or other children in care.

People don't stop to think of things like that.

anon no they are not the same do some research you haven't got a clue

Wow, thanks for sharing whatsthepointofmorgan

It sounds like the whole system has been tainted with political correctness and virtue signalling to the degree that we can't even have a rational discussion about it without being afraid of being called racist.

Sixisthemagicnumber I thought the people you were referring to were families. Why would the some be afraid of their own sons.

In the accommodation families and single persons were housed in individual rooms but they had a communal day room which they could use. The men that the women were frightened off were not from the same family.

A 15 year old male from, e.g., Syria, is actually like a fully grown man here.

When I read statements like this, it always concerns me.

In the noughties, I taught across Southern Europe and the Middle East. I've taught Cypriot, Syrian, Lebanese, Iraqi, Jordanian, Palestinian and Turkish teenagers up to the age of 18, both male and female.

There were always a few big lads as outliers but, on the whole, these teenagers looked and behaved liked teenagers. You would not mistake them for adults at all. They would have young skin and faces, gangly and clumsy ways of moving around (the lads inevitably falling over their feet as their minds haven't quite got used to the parameter of their bodies) and still had moments of obliviousness and youthful naiviety (even when they were trying to be grown up).

In fact, the more religiously conservative the family, the younger the children tended to look. They would often be smaller than the rest of their peers because of religious concerns over extracurricular activities, going outside domestic space and dietary differences throughout the year. Again, children from contested areas were again smaller due to food supply shortages.

I worked in a few countries that still have compulsory national service for all males over 18, and I went to some of my former students' parades. Again, I cannot say that any of them looked older than what they were, which was young men under the age of 21... and that was after a couple of years of military training. They did not look like adult males in their late twenties or older.

So when I read this notion that middle eastern teens look like adults, it makes me wonder just exactly is going on because that is simply not my experience at all.

Again, after years working with teens from ME families in the region, I find it bizarre that there is this idea that women and children are not prioritised in those cultures. If anything, in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Cyprus, children are the soul of an extended family and are fussed over to distraction. Indeed, civic space in Beirut is more child-friendly than any British city or town.

Of course, these are only my experiences and observations, but I strongly suspect that many of these minors are far older than is believed and I also suspect they aren't from the countries they say they are.

Another thing I will add is that, unlike British teenagers and young adults, many of my pupils were culturally disposed to be heavily reliant upon and embedded within family and family networks. These were not cultures where young people put their belongings in a handkerchief and set out to make their fortunes far from home.

These are still cultures where when you marry, you live with parents or very near parents. You get a job through familial connections. You marry someone where your parents know their parents. You go to certain cafes and restaurants because your family knows the owner's family. When you find a job as a male, you may be expected to support your sisters until they marry. You don't just leave the family; they are your lifeline, your tribe.

I can't think of one pupil I ever taught that at age 15 to 18 would be able to set out across Europe to make their way to Britain on their own. My students just were not mature or resilient enough. Many of them were very protected at home and kept quite young compared to British children, even the children from agricultural families. The boys in particular would have struggled to look after themselves. I really hesitate to think how they would survive in a house with other single men; they are used to environments where mothers and grandmothers do all the domestic work.

Sixisthemagicnumber
. The accommodation they were staying in had a Communal Room that could Be used all day long but the young single men who were housed in the accommodation would be in there and the women and children found it intimidating to be sharing the space.

What I am trying to get at is you mention families, you mention single men. But no one ever mentions single girls or women

Where are they

There were single women living at the accommodation too. We didn't get much interaction with them at the church, they sometimes came in to pick up some clothing and we would see them walking around the streets but that was about it. The asylum seekers in the accommodation were about 70% single males and the other 30% were a mix of single women and women with children (I don't think we had any families with mum, dad and children).

callipy

whatsthepoint was quoting another poster earlier on in the thread

I do not want people from radically different cultures sharing my space. I don't think it works.