Yoof!

Communicating with younger people is sometimes... difficult ! They're polite but not listening! I'd thought that the younger of my lodgers who has been refused asylum in UK, understood the SEVERAL times both me and his social worker have spoken to him about what is potentially possible for him in the time he has before the Home Office gets around to 'invite' him to leave the country. In short: he has been encouraged to stay at college, to get as much training and as many qualifications as he can for two reasons: 1. He will have a final chance to show the Home Office how much of an asset he has been and could continue to be if allowed to stay (it HAS happened before!). 2. If he is returned to his home country he will be 'worth more' as a trained and qualified person. He spent a few days in London and returned lat last night full of how amazing the city is, about how MUCH there is there and how he'd experienced communities from his homeland. In typical youthful fashion he announced his intention to move to London. Of course, I understand his response especially as he doesn't know how long he will be allowed to stay here, but I was dismayed by his inability to answer basic and obvious questions about accommodation and employment with anything other than the 'it will be OK' into which young people put so much store.

I may have mentioned his usually amusing tendency to speak to me with a charitable smugness suggestive of humouring an old codger. That, along with the realisation that I was repeating myself AGAIN meant I lost patience with him. I wasn't irritated or angry, just tired of trying to impart information which was clearly not seeping in. I tried to make sure he understood that should he move he would lose all the support he is currently receiving sand will have to deal with the Home Office when they eventually catch up with him, on his own. In youthful hubris he doesn't see what the problem will be- this despite a possee of adults working together to ensure his situation with the Home Office remains stable and low priority. After living in Consett and then Newcastle it is NO surprise that he was seduced by the sights and sounds and nightlife of London. It isn't surprising either that he would want to go to live in the megatropolis, but expecting something as complex as relocating to London in his current situation to be easy because he really wants it, highlights his lack of maturity more than he realises.

Although the other lad is a couple of years older, he has so much less life experience because of the amount of time he has spent in 'care' and because of his relationship with his father and sister whom he sees every weekend. He lacks basic interactive skills. If HE was talking about moving to London there would be deafening alarm bells. The fact that he will be moving out into his first place as a (semi) independent adult in a couple of months is in itself concerning. He is a major reason I want to foster: to me the point of fostering is to take a child out of immediate danger AND to do my best to ensure that the child will be able to live independently when they leave the system. It seems clear that in his case, my lodger did not receive this in the many years he was in 'care'. He provided an additional income to foster carers who did little to stimulate or equip him for life in twentyfirst century Britain. He lacks basic interactive skills but is a nice kid. He is a major moaner, but almost never to the people responsible or able to address his criticisms. I've tried to get him to look for the positives in situations as well as to complain to the appropriate people rather than seeking comfort from telling anyone in earshot how shit his life is. He gets more sympathy from tales of the woe he experiences on a daily basis than from sharing happy, fun, positive things! The social workers and my friends who've encountered him all comment that he is a lot more interactive than he was when he first arrived, I commented that although he is definitely speaking more, he seems to be listening less: if I have a conversation with him he seems to be thinking of the next thing HE will say rather than listening and responding to me. He does tend to drone on, and on (bless him!)- often about things about which I have at best; peripheral knowledge and interest and he has a tendency to mumble, so in truth; I only get a percentage of what he says, but I've learned that it is better not to interrupt him!

I enjoy young people with an awareness of what is happening around them and what they want from it. It amuses me that the older I get, the more I am inclined to research and question my assumptions and beliefs, that is not so popular among the young where certainty and conviction are the currency.