Asylum Seeking Children – Eastern Fostering Services
Lucy Stevens - 8th November 2017
We’ve all seen it on the news. We’ve watched the exodus of men, women and children with a mounting sense of horror and helplessness. We know that there are thousands upon thousands of children displaced from their homes and everything they’ve ever known. We know many of these children are on their own, traumatised, bewildered and afraid. We live in the age of information, where, from the comfort of our armchairs we can witness the plight of others. Never have we been so armed with the images, the soundtrack of suffering which could allow us to put ourselves relatively effortlessly into the shoes of others. And yet I am struggling to conjure the words to explain how it feels to
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The Home Office Screening Interview – Eastern Fostering Services
Lucy Stevens - 8th November 2017
The Big Screen I’m misleading you a little this week because I’m not going to be blogging about the cinema. Though what I’m attempting to describe was at times as surreal to me as something you might glimpse on the big screen. This week’s blog is about the Home Office screening interview that all children seeking asylum in the UK need to attend. Often this screening interview takes place at the point of entry. But quite often it happens some time after the child has arrived in the country, particularly if the child has been discovered by authorities somewhere other than at the border. Our fostered child’s interview came five weeks after he came to live with us.The purpose of
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Dealing with communication & silence – Eastern Fostering Services
Lucy Stevens - 8th November 2017
There are all sorts of behaviours that foster carers have to deal as they care for children. These range from swearing to bedwetting, smearing to sexualised behaviour, destroying everything in sight to screaming and shouting the house down. A carer dealing with behaviours like these could easily be forgiven for wanting a little peace and quiet. But silence from a child can be equally draining. Prolonged silence from a child is a bit like hitting the metaphorical wall that runners refer to. It is a barrier that hurts, overwhelms and which at times feels insurmountable. Silence is golden Generally, I believe silence is a good thing, a powerful thing – a way of sticking it to this relentlessly unsilent
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Blog Corner
Lucy Stevens - 8th November 2017
The interview The day, when it arrives is cold and wet, unremarkable in many ways for January. But this day is remarkable because it’s the day that’s been looming over us for six months. It’s the day of our foster son’s substantive interview at the Home Office. The basis for asylum being granted or denied. We’ve taken great pains to explain what is going to happen on the day. We have explained that this is the interview during which the Home Office will study his statement and ask him lots of painful questions about his home country, his reasons for leaving and the journey that brought him to us and his claim for asylum. Yet in the run up to the
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