In January 2022, we resumed workshops for STAGE 3 of APiC’s COVID-19 Project with Children and Young People. Supported by the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland (CYPCS), #ScotYouthandCOVID3 has recalled the Young Consultants who participated in our original two stages of the project.
The study is a participant-led project involving teams from Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and (Rural) Stirlingshire and Falkirk, each with 4-6 boys and girls, aged 10-16 in the first round, and now ages 12-18.
We ended #ScotYouthandCOVID2 with a set of 34 Asks to Scottish Government to improve children and young people’s experiences now and in the future. Our Young Consultants also devised a strategy to create a Manifesto for Children and Young People’s Rights in Recovery that supports the needs of as many across Scotland as possible.
In this next stage, we are fulfilling the Young Consultants’ strategy from #ScotYouthandCOVID2. This includes holding more workshops with our original Young Consultants, primary school children, and other groups that have thus far not had enough opportunity to be heard in the pandemic.
Unaccompanied Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Scotland
In this week’s blog, we report on one of these additional conversations, with young people supported by The Scottish Guardianship Service, a partnership between Scottish Refugee Council and Aberlour. The young people have either fled war of persecution and been separated from their families, or have found themselves in the UK due to human trafficking and exploitation. Guardians are advocates who support children and young people through the asylum and trafficking systems, as well as providing advocacy in relation to care and health.
It is important to note that while the UK Government is responsible for the national approach to asylum seeking and refugee status, the Scottish Government and local authorities have responsibility for policy issues relating to migration and support and protection for young people that arrive. Glasgow is a dispersal centre for Asylum Seekers, and is where the Scottish Refugee Council is based. However, the state care of individuals arriving in Scotland can also be distributed to any other local authority area.
#ScotYouthandCOVID3: Scottish Refugee Council Workshop
Thursday 5th May, we ran a face-to-face session at the Scottish Refugee Council’s offices in Glasgow, with four young people (Young Consultants) supported by their Guardianship service. All were young men between the ages of 16 and 19. One had been in the UK for the full duration of the pandemic, while the others had arrived during.
Unlike other workshops on this project, we didn’t talk through the timeline of the pandemic. Instead, we engaged in conversation around each of the participants’ experiences in Scotland so far, and what changes could improve their and others’ wellbeing in the future.
In the remainder of the blog, we discuss the really big themes that surfaced from our discussion and have led to additional needs to be incorporated into the Manifesto for Children and Young People’s Rights in Recovery.
1: We need a Fair, Consistent and Flexible Education Offer for Young Asylum Seekers and Refugees
Young Consultants told us about how they all wish to have good quality opportunities to learn English and other new skills. However, they feel the options open to them don’t always assist with integration. For example, they felt strongly that all local authorities should have fair and consistent provision of full-time English lessons to everyone in their position.
At the moment, different local authorities make different arrangements, and some people get more education than others. In fact, one Young Consultant spoke about how he had suddenly had to stop college at one point because the local authority didn’t release the money for his course. Young Consultants also talked about how local authorities may place them in a college far away from where they live. One talked about needing to get up at 6 AM and take two buses, rather than either attending the one most local to him or moving close to the college.
They also had other key points to make about the education they receive:
- English lessons could be more practical, and they might learn other skills while they learn English. For example, some Young Consultants felt the best way to learn was through work experience e.g. in a care home or garage. Equally, they also felt that the rote learning approach of English lessons in college can mean that if a young person is shy and doesn’t like to participate in front of all the adults in the room, then their language skills get held back. The same happens if this is just not their natural learning style.
- Learning alongside other young people would help them integrate. Due to language needs and the Scottish education system, no matter their age, Young Consultants were required to attend college. This means they are surrounded by other asylum seekers and refugees significantly older than they are. One Young Consultant, who had never been to school before, expressed how getting the opportunity to learn alongside people their own age would help them feel more included. Even if they couldn’t do this all the time, they would like there to be more opportunities to socialise with local young people.
Other Young Consultants on this project have also suggested a more flexible and pupil-centred approach to the Scottish education system, which would help meet these aims.
2: We need State Support that Truly Listens and Cares to the Needs of Unaccompanied Asylum Seekers and Refugees
Young Consultants told us about their experiences of their social workers, support workers, and the Guardianship service. They were all were extremely positive about the Guardianship service, which provides a friendly ear and assistance, especially when it comes to gaps in other support. So too with support workers, who had frequently been pivotal in giving practical support.
However, while some had positive experiences, Young Consultants generally felt social workers were quite absent from their lives. Often, they ask for support and are told ‘that’s not my job’, and then don’t know where to turn. One Young Consultant talked about how he wouldn’t directly reach out to his social worker, because he didn’t think it would be effective. Instead, he would reach out to the Guardian Service in the first instance.
Young Consultants placed in the city had better experiences than those who had been placed outwith it, where they often felt isolated, unsafe and unsupported. Young Consultants gave disturbing accounts of conduct from local authority staff that left them feeling “treated like animals”. One such experience is especially illustrative of the changes that need to happen:
The Young Consultant had been housed by a local authority with limited experience supporting unaccompanied asylum seekers and refugees. His social worker had initially been unresponsive to his needs to the point he made an emotional complaint to them. Around this time, he was also assaulted at a bus stop by a resident. Subsequently, the social worker excluded him from activities on the basis that his depression would make others sad. He was split up from a friend he’d been with since he arrived in the UK.
Becoming desperate, he expressed to his social worker that he was having suicidal thoughts and needed urgent help, via WhatsApp. The social worker then blocked his number. The next time he saw them was on a short visit two months later, when they didn’t mention his call for help.
He tried to make a complaint to his social worker’s boss, requesting he be moved to a city. In their meeting, the manager asked “which city” he wanted to go to, to which the Young Consultant responded “any city” (having no knowledge of any Scottish cities). He was pressed for a specific choice, and when unable to give one, the manager insinuated that if he didn’t choose they would send him back to his home country!
For the Young Consultant this was an unimaginably cruel and hurtful threat, which caused three months of unnecessary suffering. He didn’t know at that time that the manager had no authority to deport him. He said he ‘felt like he was in prison’, unable to reach out for any further support or be able to change his situation at all.
To avoid experiences like this, Young Consultants identified three simple improvements to support provision for separated refugees and asylum seekers:
- Training for workers. Young Consultants noted they need consistency in the level of care and understanding of their needs, from the people they depended on for support. Some local authorities lack the knowledge and experience required to support and empathise with them. The Guardianship service noted that this is also likely to increase, as national level strategy is increasingly looking to place people in more remote locations.
Young Consultants felt this was a gap which could be easily addressed through training which emphasised simple principles such as respect, kindness and dignity, and patience with their English skills (as it may be difficult to express what they need easily and quickly).
- Greater responsiveness to urgent needs. Young Consultants felt they need to be able to get an urgent response on support needs such as a mental health emergency or missing college payments. There could be an emergency helpline or channel for this.
- Consequences for abusive behaviour. Young Consultants felt that there was no consequences for abuse or neglect towards them. They need to know who in a local authority they can call upon for complaints against their treatment by social workers, and know their rights. They felt the lack of clear route and consequences encourages a culture of bad behaviour.
3: We Need more Help Transitioning into Independent Life and Getting the Rest and Leisure we Need
Young Consultants all agreed they needed specific support to help them transition into an independent life. They especially highlighted four support needs:
- Household budgeting
- Bills: what they are for, paying them and typical amounts.
- Shopping: how much things cost and how to pay for them.
- Leisure and social opportunities.
For example, they appreciate a support worker taking them out for a coffee, or buying their shopping. However, they also feel that this doesn’t help them understand to get to grips with the basics: how much things cost and how to pay for them.
One Young Consultant told us he hadn’t realised the gas and electricity bill were separate, and assumed he was paying for heating via his electricity bill. He later discovered he was in debt of around £180 and has needed to reduce his food budget (out of an already low income) to save enough to pay it off. Indeed, all Young Consultants worried about the expense of heating, and talked about sitting in the cold during winter, with blankets wrapped around them to save money.
Another Young Consultant felt strongly that access to leisure and social opportunities should be improved:
“Think of refugees like ordinary people, who need to rest or to travel or go on trips. Think about the recreational needs of a normal person in this position. I was born and grew up in nature and no one thinks of how hard it is for a person like me to spend 9 months in a polluted city without nature.”
This corresponds strongly with what other young people have told us in this project about the importance of social and natural environments to wellbeing.
The solution Young Consultants identified to these needs is a more thorough transition, facilitated by their social or support worker. The goal of this is similar in principle to those for effective school transitions by the other Young Consultants in the project: that is to enable a direct hands-on experience of ‘how it all works’ – settings, processes, people and culture – before being expected to go it alone.
What’s Next?
We will be convening one more workshop our original Young Consultants and Primary School young Consultants to discuss our findings. We will then be releasing a Scotland-wide survey to check-in on whether or not we have the Manifesto for Children and Young People’s Rights in Recovery correct. If you’d like further details in the meantime please get in touch with Dr Jenny Wood at jenny.wood@aplaceinchildhood.org.
We will be posting further updates on this project as we go, so follow us on Twitter for updates. We will also be writing a report at the end of the project, to chronicle our journey to the Children and Young People’s Manifesto for Rights in Recovery.
Read about wave one and wave two of #ScotYouthandCOVID here.
Find out about other APiC projects.