Rest and Be Thankful
The sun sets by 4pm in late December and so at 5:30 when the taxi arrived from the south coast of England, it was pitch black. Kevin and I rushed outside, having hurriedly pushed the two barking dogs into the far room, yelled up to the kids, grabbed jumpers from the front hallway and stumbled out into the courtyard. The outside bulb over the doorway was broken, so the only light was what escaped our windows and the yellowish internal bulb of the cab.
Just days before, we'd been approved to become host parents to Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Young People. In a whirlwind of phone calls and email messages over the week, we’d been told a match had been made and a 17 year old boy would be arriving from an intake hotel in the far south of England.
We'd waited nervously all day... checking in periodically with our social worker to see if she'd heard any progress. We knew very little about M - just the language he spoke (of which there isn't a great translation app), that he'd arrived by a small boat, and that the taxi had left the hotel at 8am. We'd spent the day cleaning and pacing and worrying and getting everything we could ready.
Our journey to this moment started just a few months earlier when an ad appeared on my Facebook feed. In the council's branding colours of green and purple, social work put out a call asking for families to come forward to host unaccompanied asylum seekers aged 16-18.
As I clicked through, the comments read like the comment section of a far right wing tabloid. “I will host someone if you collect my bins on time” “Stirling doesn't need more people” “They aren’t welcome here”
Instantly and without speaking to Kevin, I emailed social work to express an interest. When I told him later, he simply responded “Of course,” as if there were no other options. We’d always talked about fostering, with every intention of waiting until the kids were older, but now seemed as good a time as any.
It has been a year since we started the process of becoming foster parents and nine months since that taxi arrived in the dark. I told my friends recently that the transition to 4 children has been as much of a challenge as the time I had a baby a year and 4 days after my last.
What had been my more-than full time job of running Gartur Stitch Farm has slipped quickly into the corners of unbelievably full days. Emails are now scratched out at 3am. I pack orders as I yell to get the kids out the door on the 3rd school run of the morning. My camera sits gathering dust in the corner.
We calculated this week that we spend over two hours just on the school run. Me, a confirmed homebody, spends at least that many hours a day sitting in the car taking phone calls with social work/education/guardianship services/school/ kids while I wait between appointments (M’s arrival had coincided with Theo completely refusing school and Georgia being assessed for autism).
I worry more about what we are having for dinner than I ever have. Food has been tricky to negotiate - our freezer full of farm raised meat rendered useless for someone on a halal diet…and that is before we even get to the issue of a teenager’s preference for burgers and chips in our “everything is home grown” kitchen.
I have always operated by the mantra, “do the work you want to be known for” but the definition of that has shifted this year and so, as a result, has the work. After a week of meetings and evenings filled with soothing worries and researching educational options (not many for ESOL here in the Forth Valley) there hasn’t been a lot of time or energy to run farm tours at at the weekends or to pick up the camera or develop new materials.
As I stumbled into the courtyard on that December evening, our whole life changed - but not nearly as much as that of the young man who sat in the back of that taxi.
Now we can laugh about those early days - arriving in the dark to the middle of nowhere with a house full of kids and cats and dogs. We talk about that first night a lot. He remembers desperately wanting a city. I remember desperately hoping to not add further trauma to this kid’s life. Those early days were tough.
Nine months on, he is exactly as wonderful and infuriating as every other teenager in this house. Of all the things I thought in those early days, the things I hoped for, this is both the most surprising and the most welcome. What a privilege it is to be here for so many of someone’s firsts.
To sit at a table with all 6 of us and be beaten at Uno by a 17 year old card shark who had been alone for many years already.
To be a minuscule pebble against the tide of hate for asylum seekers in the UK, by simply turning up in the dark on a December evening and every day since.
That’s the work I want to be known for, even if its just by the other 5 people sitting around that table.
Most councils in the UK are recruiting host families like ours. There is a massive housing shortage for these kids, with many staying in hotels without access to education and limited support. Get in touch with your local council to find out more.
Fostering Across Borders has a lovely film about the work as well.
