Oh Very Dear...
At 19yrs old, the lad is legally an adult and doesn't have to be 'looked after' by the local authority- at least in principle, except that he became a 'failed asylum-seeker' whilst lodging with me. Social workers and me ran around like crazy things trying to understand the Byzantine machinations of the Home Office and were eventually assured that there would be no dawn raids to take this 19yr old to a detention centre- UNLESS he got into any trouble, in which case the process to deport him would be accelerated and he would forfeit the cash sweetener he would have been offered when 'invited' to leave, it apparently costs thousands of pounds to deport a single person. We were assured that it was likely to be two or more years before they'd get to him and we convinced him that his best course of action was to continue being 'looked after' and to get as much as he could from being at college: the idea being that he might secure certification to help him to find good work when he is returned to his home country. Sadly, he claimed that corruption is so endemic in his home country that amassing lots of money would be much more useful than any qualifications.
The news was devastating at the time and he resisted it until announcing a few weeks ago that he had accepted it and was going to take our guidance,cue relieved sighs all round. When he apparently 'fell' for a fellow student I was even happier as he had been avoiding getting involved with lasses as there didn't seem to be much point to him if he could be taken away at any moment. It appears now that he was possibly lulling us into a sense of false security to get us 'off his back'. I won't go into details for his confidentiality and the fact that the social workers had no choice but to declare him a 'missing person' and a rozzer visited me the following day. So his actions have put him onto the shortlist of people who will be deported at the earliest opportunity. He will have a fugitive life until he is caught and I expect that he will, eventually, be caught. I can only imagine what it must have felt like for him living with the uncertainty of not knowing when his life here would be cut short, but by 'running away' he has made things so much worse as there will be national alerts for him. He made much of getting documentation showing that he was entitled to continue his college course, I find myself wondering if that was part of his plan: the document might be enough to dupe a potential employer into thinking he has the right to work here.
it is not at all about me... though it WILL have a financial impact etc as it comes before I have become eligible to foster, more niggling is thinking about how long he had been planning it and how many deceptions he employed to make good his 'escape'. I believed we had a good relationship: I've said several times that he has more to offer society in general than any of the other lads I've supported, all of whom were born and brought up in UK. He is fiercely independent, which I applaud, even though it does come across as a (slightly comic) Machismo which probably comes from his cultural background more than anything else. He told me several times how much he enjoyed being in my home and with me and that he hoped he would be able to stay until he was 21 and the social worker support stopped. Did he mean those things? I suppose I will never know.
Although I am convinced that he has made a terrible mistake and that he has underestimated the power of Priti Patel's Home Office to find and fast-track him out of the country, I do wish him all the very best.
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