How child refugees from Calais received help to start a new life
Chris Wright
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
When the UK committed to home refugee children amid the closure of the Calais migrant camp, organisations like Catch22 were asked to help handle reception arrangements. Chris Wright explains the work it did in Devon.
One Wednesday afternoon last October, I received a call from the Home Office. They asked us to run a short-term respite centre for unaccompanied asylum-seeking boys coming from Calais. We faced three immediate challenges: find a suitable site; assemble a staff team; and to do it quickly as the boys were arriving within 96 hours.
Preparation
Within hours we had a local authority: Devon; a site: Beam House, which is a PGL adventure holiday camp in Great Torrington; and contacted colleagues all over the country who would give up their weekend, week, indefinite future to come and build a new service. By the next morning, we had a full roster of workers drawn from the National Citizen Service; teaching, youth services, probation and mental health teams; and from across Catch22.
Within 72 hours, a full set of staff were sitting at Beam House, planning how to most effectively safeguard, support and manage up to 70 adolescent boys until they were reunited with their families or moved into more permanent accommodation.
The fast moving situation made it hard to plan. That first night, we sat waiting for the coach to arrive, not knowing who was on it, or what their needs or language ability were. We had to be ready for every eventuality.
Beam House
The boys arrived tired and disoriented, but well behaved and respectful. Some were in a rough shape - one had broken his arm in Libya, and had not seen a doctor; another had a broken jaw, the result, he said, of a punch thrown by a French policeman.
We had chosen Beam House because it was remote, but the boys could have walked off site at any point. We had to convince them to choose to stay with us. They had to feel safe, to trust us, to believe we were working as hard as we could to reunite them with their families, and move them into more permanent accommodation.
We knew that the best way to do this was by building relationships and creating a strong culture of trust. While we put in place fun activities each day such as sports, entertainment and English lessons, we also prioritised support, listening and relationship building.
Solving challenges
Security was our first concern. A partner provided security guards to stand at the end of our long drive. They patrolled, sending away reporters, finding photographers in bushes and making sure that delivery drivers were just that.
We found ourselves at the centre of a media blitz. Reporters descended on the town, writing a story of outrage among residents. A farmer was filmed, unhappy about the refugees arriving in the area. That one negative comment on BBC Devon was possibly the best thing that could have happened to local sentiment.
The people of Great Torrington were outraged that they were seen in the media as unwelcoming. A "Refugees ARE welcome" Facebook group was launched, and immediately flooded with charities, local businesses and individuals all wanting to help.
A lady had cleared out her son's room; did we want his old clothes? A factory had a surplus of 1,000 yoghurts; could we use them? This outpouring of generosity of both spirit and goods did not let up throughout our four weeks at Beam House.
Through Devon Council, we sent out a call for shoes, games, books; the local arts centre offered itself as a central drop-off point and we would receive regular calls asking us to do additional pick-ups, as they were full to overflowing. We received hundreds of calls from people wanting to help. The local Rotary Club did a collection, and homeless people in Barnstaple worked with a charity to pack bags of things for the children.
The Mayor hosted a vigil for the refugees in Great Torrington centre, bringing together people to show support.
Social work input
The social workers seconded to our team by Devon Council were the lynchpin of our operation (see box). They were on site 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Their managers freed them up to work with us full time, and their commitment was inspiring.
They worked through language difficulties to understand the boys' needs, acting as their advocates outside of Beam House. Strong relationships with the boys meant they recognised their friendship dynamics and ensured they were placed together where possible.
The boys were resilient, but a trusting relationship meant that we had some disclosures that were very hard for staff to hear. There was a flipside to this; when we treated them like the children they are, we were reminded of what they had been through.
A colleague was fussing over a child playing football, because he was doing it wearing flip flops. The boy started laughing, explaining that he had walked from the Sudan to Italy in them.
This resilience and partnership working was also what solved health challenges. While they had been cleared by a doctor to travel, we had no medical history. We knew that the boys had come from countries with notable health issues and had to be prepared to triage any immediate conditions.
The speed of our deployment also meant that the boys were not eligible to access the secondary health care available in Devon. Our Public Health England liaison officer banged doors until she found dentists able to take on emergency cases and doctors at local hospitals to rush through emergency X-rays.
We found that faith was really important to the boys, and had Imams and priests come for prayers. Children needed to make calls to their parents. One boy said in a mental health session that he was desperate to speak to his mother in the Sudan as he had not spoken to her for eight months. He was provided with a phone - she'd thought he was gone forever, until she got the call. His whole attitude instantly changed.
Reuniting the boys with their families was among the most emotional experiences of my colleagues' careers.
Two boys from Afghanistan had made the journey together. While they were friendly and chatty boys, they became very quiet on the car journey. One was met by an uncle he had not seen since he was two years old. There was almost no need for the extensive Home Office checks when we saw them together - they have the same smile. The two best friends are both resettled in London, just 10 minutes' walk from each other.
The majority of the eventual 40 boys who stayed at the centre over the four weeks were successfully reunited with family members and carers across the country, but a small number whose connections did not work out were found care placements locally.
Long-term lessons
The lessons that we learnt at Beam House will inform Catch22's work moving forward.
It is much easier to deliver when everyone is aligned around one purpose. Despite many of our team never having worked together before, there was absolute clarity around what we had to achieve. This made for a "can-do" culture, with everyone pulling together as a team. This travelled up to the council senior leadership, who freed up their social workers.
We talk about the "three Ps" - the idea that everyone in society needs the same things to thrive; good people around us, a good place to live, and a purpose.
We built Beam House around these pillars. A network of caring, loving people, extending out into the community. A safe and supportive environment where they were given the freedom to be children. Activities and study that kept them busy and happy. By combining all three, we were able to deliver a service that we, Devon and the country could be proud of.
Most importantly, we learnt that when there are children in need, the community and the sector will come together to support them.
- By Chris Wright, chief executive, Catch 22
The role of Devon Council in supporting the child refugees
Devon children's services played a key role in the operation to establish the child refugee respite centre at Beam House, the PGL adventure holiday camp in Great Torrington.
Vivien Lines, head of service (children's social work and child protection) at Devon Council, says the council helped identify the site, get political backing for the operation, assess the risks and impact on the local community, and work with public agencies to ensure services were in place to meet the boys' needs.
When the boys first arrived, social workers undertook initial assessments.
Lines says: "They assessed whether they needed urgent child and adolescent mental health (CAMHS) input or had health needs, and if there were any family members in the UK to try and contact and move the children onto."
There were at least two social workers at Beam House every day, with council colleagues covering their workloads to enable them to provide support to the refugee children.
The trauma that young people had experienced meant that CAMHS professionals were sometimes needed on site, while there was a scabies outbreak that was treated by GPs who visited the site daily.
Social workers were also important in progressing reunification with family members.
"We were contacting local authorities where a boy's family member lived and working with the Home Office," Lines explains.
Once the authority where the receiving family lived had been notified and an assessment carried out, Devon social workers put in place arrangements for the child to transfer to the family's care. This did not always go smoothly, says Lines.
"A small number of authorities, such as Birmingham, had a high number of assessment requests and struggled to do them fast enough, so the Home Office put more resources in," she adds.
Social workers went with a child to the reunification meeting, while managers were able to scale support up and down when needed.
Finding sufficient translators in the South West region was also a challenge, says Lines.
However, being involved in the initiative had spin-off benefits for council staff and services. Lines says it has "kick-started" its work with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children - the council has already accepted 25 through the voluntary dispersal scheme and expects that number to reach 100 over the next four years.
"It's created a mine of resources we can tap into and a volunteer network has been created," she says.
"Our workforce was happy to have stepped up and been involved - it was positive for the morale in the service."