30 yr old school pupil reported to Home Office

[failingatlife]

An asylum seeker pupil at a school in Ipswich is being investigated after claims he is in his 30s. Maybe he is trans age? If he identifies as a teenager then we should respect that and treat him as such, right?

Refugees lying about thier ages has been a problem for years. In children's services when we suspect this is happening we do an age assessment which is just two trained social workers asking a few questions - hardly fool proof. We used to do tooth analysis but it gave an age range of 5 years so wasn't helpful either.

Lots and lots of over age 'kids' have been through the care system. However, some of them do look older and seem to mature physically quicker - which makes it all the more difficult. I remember one lad who said he was 15 and no one beleived him - but when you looked back at his picture from when he was 12 (and in another borough) he totally looked 12.

Christ just seen the photo. I'm 38 and he looks older than me!

I'm not surprised by this. I used to work with care leavers and there were times when the males who arrived as unaccompanied asylum seeking children were clearly older than the 18-25 age range ww should have been working with.

Just out of interest, have any female asylum seekers lied about their age to get into school or is it just the men ?

The thing that pisses me off about all this, apart from the safeguarding issues, is that people who are dishonest, gaming the system are allowed in, but people who are open about their situation can get turned away on some stupid technicality.

I remember a kid who arrived as an unaccompanied minor living at the children's home - who was hardly ever there. He was from Pakistan but had lied that he was from Afghanistan and spend most of his time with his extended family. It was obvious that this info gets about.

Furthermore, something most people don't realise, is that perpetrators of war crimes are as likely to seek and be granted asylum as their victims, so you have all these poor sods having to keep looking back over their shoulder in case they bump into one of them. It is hardly 'asylum' if the problems follow you to where you are supposed to be safe.

Those blokes in school are fucking terrifying. God knows where they are from or why they are here. It can't be because they are actually seeking asylum otherwise they wouldn't be pretending to be unaccompanied minors.

With regards to the refugees the women were all left behind with no husband and son now to protect them from being raped back home

Boys from certain ethnic backgrounds can look older due to the earlier onset and more obviously noticeable facial hair.

All this means though, is we need more rigorous, well evidenced, expert designed systems to weed out the chancers (no judgement, pretty certain I would tell untruths to escape a war zone) from the genuine minors.

And yes, any safeguarding issue can affect the rights of women and children, so no reason not to discuss it here.

For what it's worth, I don't think he looks in his 30s, and i know from bitter experience that it's possible for a photo to add years.

But there is an element of uncertainty about his age, it wouldn't be referred to the home office if there wasn't.

There are far more appropriate places for him to gain GCSE than a school.

I'd also like some investigation into what is going on with men claiming to be unaccompanied minors seeking asylum being placed in residential children's homes and schools with kids. Who are these dudes and why are they here? Genuine asylum seekers don't lie.

Somewhere on these boards is a foster carer from Kent. She has tales to make your hair stand on end wrt safeguarding girls (and boys).

With regards to the refugees the women were all left behind with no husband and son now to protect them from being raped back home

Your struck out point is valid. It is not just the issue of protecting women and children but the loss of these men working and contributing generally to the good of the society they are leaving needs to be factored in.

I haven't looked at Fox News in donkey's years so wondered how they were reporting issues. They had a video of the immigrant caravan marching to the US Border. I stopped the video and looked through several frames.

Every single one of them was obviously an adult male. Not a woman or girl (or young boy) in sight.

Asylum seekers a. Might not know their age and/or b. Will claim a lower age in order to try and get and education - neither of which is a terrible crime.

As Warsan Shire says, nobody leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.

www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/no-one-puts-their-children-in-a-boat-unless-the-wa/

Linking this to the trans-age concept and inferring paedophilia manages to be leverage racism to justify transphobia, and transphobia to justify racism.

No one said "go home"

The objection is unchecked adult males being placed in foster care and schools amongst children.

That same rule would apply to me. I'm safe to be around children. But how many would want me in their kids class they don't know me or know why I'm there.

There are also adult learning centres and night classes etc the right to an education can be granted.

The problem is that people sign.off on this stuff. People take a look at an adult male and look the other way with no idea the risk they pose

The people behind protecting children are infiltrated and forced to disregard everything we know about safe garding.

That is a worry. A huge one.

As a rule, children from war zones or areas of conflict or poverty look younger than their equivalent in the West. And by quite some way. A lot of it is to do with malnutrition and disrupted food supplies; they don't eat as much protein as they should, so they tend to be smaller, not as much muscle tone etc.

This is absolutely my experience too. People past 30 might age faster in stressful, disease-ridden environments, but teenagers almost always look younger than we would expect them too. My FB feed had a lot of people insisting that the blokes with craggy profiles and receding hairlines were totally 16 years old. The posters were all people who had never travelled to a developing country.

I get WHY the guys lie (God knows, I probably would too in the circumstances), but can we just admit that yes, it is a lie?

nobody leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.

Er, that is probably the most easily falsified statement I have read all week!

People migrate to other countries for all kinds of reasons, and the large majority of people who choose or attempt to move to another country are not refugees but are doing so for various reasons including culture, economic benefits, marriage/relationships....

I get WHY the guys lie (God knows, I probably would too in the circumstances), but can we just admit that yes, it is a lie?

Yes they are liars and if they are economic immigrants rather than refugees fleeing a genuine threat they should be sent back.

We have had 2 noticeably older pupils, both Refugees, where I work. Both were enormous men, very obviously late teens and early 20's, incredibly quiet and gentle. Teachers and kids speculated but nothing was said.

We've also have refugees that are incredibly small and thin - clearly underdeveloped.

All are trying to just get on with things. I know that this is open to abuse, but when looked at on a case by case basis, it's incredibly sad.

This has been happening for a long time. When I in Y8, back in the early 90s, we had an Iraqi 'boy' join our class halfway through the year. He looked 25 at a minimum, had a full hairy chest and looked like he needed to shave again by lunchtime each day. Several of us spotted him driving a takeaway delivery van during evenings/weekends. I clearly remember our Head of Year talking to him as we waited in the lunch queue - he was saying, 'We still haven't received the paperwork from your last school, you know. The address details we were given were wrong, we need your parents to double check and provide the correct address and details for them - we need that info as soon as possible or it will cause problems, can you please get your parents to phone us tonight?'. He stopped attending a week or two later and we never saw him again. I remember us asking the deputy head about it in a lesson - obviously he couldn't say much to us about it, but he did say that he'd heard of a few cases where refugees claimed to be younger so that they could 'get the education they'd missed out on in their home countries'.

During his time at our school, this 'boy' went on a week long residential trip with us where we all slept in dorms. He took a big roll of cash with him, which was rather unusual for a 13/14 year old. He also offered money to several girls (including me) if we'd perform sexual acts on him in the woods. Massive safeguarding fail - even though the teacher were clearly suspicious of him, he was just left unsupervised with us. Being immature teenagers, we just thought it was funny at the time - we had no idea what a safety issue it was really!

I am not saying it is impossible for age discrepancies to happen but I live in an area where there are a large number of unaccompanied child migrants.
Where there is doubt of a person’s age stringent procedures are used to ascertain it as closely as possible.
They are examined by a doctor and dentist and interviewed ar length by a social worker who has a lot of experience of their country and has lived in that part of the world.
If necessary an interpreter is used.
There is great pressure among refugees to appear under 18 as those who do so are granted immediate asylum and cared for by social services. Thus the lengths taken to ensure their stories match up. Frequently they do not and, if judged as over 18, they have to apply for asylum in the normal manner with no guarantee of being able to stay.
The young people I know are not economic migrants and are frequently traumatised by their experiences.Their stories are often heartbreaking.
Those assessed to be around of the age of 15, or younger, are placed in schools. Older children are accommodated in FE colleges.
So yes mistakes can be made, although I would think classing a 30 year old as a child is extreme. Unfortunately newspapers like the DM have a deliberate policy of stirring up hatred and fear of these unfortunate people.
For example, the person in the blue jacket in one of the DM photos was later reported to be a person legally in the UK and working with immigrants and not a refugee as they reported.

@Roomba

That is shocking! Hopefully none of those students took the money?? 

In this strange world nowadays, this is another issue where I agree with David TC Davies MP, in that I have no problem with requiring unaccompanied asylum seeking children (either all, or those where there is a concern about age) to have a dental examination

wood

I think that is entering into "would never happen" territory.

The fact is there are people on here who do foster care who have posted befire as mentioned above

Other posters have confirmed incidents at their school

Yes we can all have sympathy for their plight. I for one do hope they get the help support and set up that they need. But we can't let that cloud judgement.

Whether they are dangerous or not is irrelevant. Adults have no place in these schools. That's the point of safe garding. Yes it is difficult for 99 percent of decent people who would not abuse the situation. But it's meant to stop that 1 percent who would and do.

We can't turn a blind eye because we feel bad for them. 1 mistake is 1 too many.

And not allowing them into a school is not saying they should go home. It's not saying we won't help you

There are other options