At 85 and 63 respectively, you would possibly count on Bob and Diana Townsend from the picturesque coastal city of Dawlish in south Devon to be having fun with a quiet retirement. As an alternative, the couple had one thing utterly completely different in thoughts.
The couple, one of many oldest foster mother and father within the UK, had been pressured to take a break from their foster care work in 2020 when Bob underwent most cancers remedy, however this break simply gave them an opportunity to determine what they actually wished to do with the subsequent decade forward. them. The reply? Present a house for a few of the UK’s most weak individuals: unaccompanied refugee youngsters.
Now they share their house with two teenage boys who fled Afghanistan throughout the rise of the Taliban. The boys grew to become targets of violence after their households labored with the British military.
Each boys had traveled overland from their house nations and had been detained and overwhelmed throughout their travels, sustaining life-changing accidents, together with listening to loss. They had been solely 15 once they arrived within the UK a yr aside – they did not converse a phrase of English.
Within the yr ending September 2022, the UK obtained 5,152 asylum purposes from unaccompanied youngsters, together with Bob and Diana’s two boys, who can’t be named for authorized causes. Each arrived with little or no training and no connections within the UK. To assist them settle in, Bob and Diana realized a number of phrases of Pashto to welcome them in their very own language. They offered a duplicate of the Quran and a prayer mat, and Bob made contacts with the native mosque to assist discover native Muslims who spoke Pasto and assist the boys settle within the space.
Diana felt she had no selection however to open her house. “I simply felt that a few of these children had such tough experiences,” she explains. “The kids on this nation have many issues, I don’t underestimate that, however for asylum seekers it’s a utterly completely different problem. On this nation in the mean time, with the hostile setting, I feel it’s unfairly unfair to them.”
Bob particularly welcomed the chance to offer sensible and emotional help to an unaccompanied asylum seeker to assist them study English and construct an in depth relationship with their host nation.
At first their makes an attempt to put a baby failed. Regardless of having greater than a decade of expertise caring for weak youth by means of the foster system, their hopes of discovering an acceptable youngster had been slim. The company they supply shelter for, Blue Sky, had nobody appropriate and though their congregation supported them, it turned out to have few connections to assist.
Then, immediately in 2021, the federal government modified its guidelines round native authorities sharing accountability for asylum help, that means Kent city councils can switch a few of the accountability to different counties. Bob and Diana had been in demand.
“Six younger males received into misery and we had a selection, if you’ll,” says Bob. “We had so little info, however we ventured one and it turned out very profitable.” A yr later they adopted one other boy and the 2 now describe themselves as brothers. “They’re very assured that they see this as their house and us as their household. They’ve been very open about that.”
Studying English was the most important problem, and the couple instantly took steps to assist the newcomers with phrases and phrases they would want. “We went by means of essentially the most staple items ‘desk, chair’ in order that they knew what was in the home and that was their first publicity to the language,” says Bob. He additionally volunteered for English language lessons for newcomers to the mosque, serving to college students choose up phrases by utilizing nursery rhymes such because the “hokey cokey” and “head, shoulders, knees, and toes.”
English was only the start of the journey the 2 boys must take. As soon as enrolled at school, it was assumed that they’d begin engaged on GCSEs – however neither of them had been prepared for that transfer. Diana explains: “It is exhausting to think about how little training they’ve had. One in every of them had attended college till the age of ten, however principally non secular research. The opposite had not been to highschool in any respect. There was the English drawback, however once we began math. [Our first foster child] did not even know what a comma was.”
Each at the moment are nicely used to highschool, study rapidly and have additionally made mates with different younger asylum seekers in close by cities. However they rely closely on the household to get better from the traumatic experiences of their childhood. In addition they do not know if their mother and father are secure.
Being across the couple’s younger grandchildren is each a supply of pleasure and a painful reminder of what they’ve misplaced. “They cover it very well 90 % of the time — they’re secure, they take pleasure in life — however when issues hit the information of their house nation, they get actually upset,” says Bob. “It is behind their minds on a regular basis, it is all the time there as a result of they simply do not know the place their households are.
“Our first boy misplaced his youthful brother, who died whereas he was right here. He received the message from his uncle in an unsympathetic method and it actually broke him for a number of days,” he says.
As foster carers, in addition they handle the labyrinthine Dwelling Workplace asylum system on behalf of the youngsters – a job that Diana finds significantly exhausting, each virtually and emotionally. The kids are requested to share and listen to their tales time and again by means of a translator, as a part of the claims system. “It would not appear to work nicely,” she remembers. “It simply appears like every little thing is unnecessarily merciless and it is clearly designed to weed out any false claimants.
“However it doesn’t consider the truth that on this case they’re actually actual. To make them relive their experiences with individuals they’ve by no means met earlier than below very disturbing circumstances is admittedly, actually exhausting for everybody, and for youths it is actually painful.
Diana is worried that different youngsters, like the 2 boys she takes in however who claimed to be adults once they arrived in an effort to not want care, can be illegally deported to Rwanda below the federal government’s new immigration coverage. “I feel inhumane is the one phrase to explain it,” she provides. “The true human price of all this has not been taken into consideration.
“They suffered quite a bit to get right here and I am unable to think about what their future might have been if that they had simply been minimize off on the final minute.” [by age]. They want care identical to some other youngster. What occurred of their homeland shouldn’t be their fault. It has nothing to do with them.”
Each boys count on to stick with the couple for at the very least one other two years. The eldest, an enormous cricket fan, now desires to play for England. The youngest has but to determine on his future. For Bob and Diana, the expertise has solely made them extra decided — irrespective of their age — to offer the house and household these younger individuals have misplaced. “Now we have a accountability and it might be unforgivable to show our again on them,” she says.
