Help at hand for children who are lost in our midst

Masinde, a 22-year-old refugee from Burundi, has been in Glasgow since 2003. She was abandoned at Central Station, aged 15, when the man who had helped her come to Scotland vanished, saying he would be back in ‘a few minutes’.

She never saw him again. She had no idea that the journey which had started when an uncle helped her escape after her parents had been killed in tribal violence, was over.

She didn’t know what asylum was, or social work, and had no idea that what felt to her like bitter cold wasn’t actually that bad for late April.

With £20 in her pocket (“I didn’t know what it was worth”) she sat, shivering, watching police in the station. People seemed able to approach them, without being arrested, so after hours, she did the same herself.

From that point, Masinde was plunged into a baffling system of legal demands, and social care, which saw her housed alongside others like her – so-called separated children who arrive in Scotland without any responsible adult, seeking asylum, as well as with Glasgow youngsters in the care system.

Four to five separated children arrive in Scotland every month, from countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and the Congo according to the Scottish Refugee Council, which this week launched a guardianship scheme to help support the 200 plus who are thought to currently be in the country. Three workers will offer independent support to these extremely vulnerable teenagers, many of whom arrive through agents or traffickers, and some of whom are sexually exploited.

Stories like that of Masinde help explain why the scheme is necessary. She has made a tremendous success of her new home – she was granted full refugee status last September. Housed and supported in the city’s Wallacewell children’s unit, she gained higher qualifications in Computing, Maths, English, Biology and Chemistry, as well as taking part in ‘community involvement’, volunteering in local primary schools.

Supported also by the Big Step, a Glasgow initiative for care-leavers, she is now undertaking a degree in biological science, while working in a city centre hotel to support herself.

Many do not do so well, and struggle with the complexities of the asylum system. Masinde, who received weekly counselling for two years to help her overcome the trauma of losing her family, says that for children the system can be baffling and terrifying, as when one of her fellow residents faced deportation. “We were saying ‘Oh my god, who’s going to be next?”, she says. “I think having a sort of guide to help people cope is a good thing. Without it I don’t know where I would be. I used to think if I hadn’t lost my family I wouldn’t be struggling this much.”

Daniel, 23, from Cameroon, was 16 when he arrived in the UK. He fled after he, his mother and his older brother were arrested and their house burned, because of their father’s political activities. The agent who brought him sent him to the Scottish Refugee Council in a taxi – this is not uncommon.

Placed inappropriately with adults in a hotel in the south side of Glasgow, he spoke little English, but found himself enmeshed in the asylum process.

“I was very naïve. After four months they took me to the UKBA to do the asylum process. I didn’t really understand what was going on. I didn’t understand how important the asylum process was,” he says. “I had no idea about this ‘asylum’. These are things we don’t even dream of when we are back home. Asylum was a strange word to me.”

Now he has refugee status and is studying for an MsC in Civil Engineering. “A ‘guardian’ definitely would have made a difference because at the time my social worker was quite busy, so having someone to look after you in the first days would make a real difference and make it better,” he says.

“I think it’s a good step. I was a child – I was just a normal child. I was definitely scared. I think about the trauma I went through every day.

“Even now, when things in my life are a bit better, its an ongoing tragedy that I am always thinking about. I’ve still not heard anything from my family, I’ve been in touch with the Red Cross tracing service but they’ve never found anybody. They’re still working on it.”