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.
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