The young people we work with

The young people we work with are unaccompanied asylum seeking minors, who at the end of the day are just teenagers- and in many ways they are just like any other teenager.

Sometimes they show up late, occasionally they forget about your meeting, some days they are grumpy and reluctant to have a conversation. I’m sure youth workers up and down the country would say this is no different to any other young person their age.

However, young people seeking asylum in the UK are actually quite different from British teenagers, even though they may present the same characteristic teenage behaviour. Many of the young people we work with grew up in war zones, and have seen members of their community or family killed. The cities of their home countries in many cases lie in ruins.

For these and many other reasons they decided to leave, risking their lives travelling through a number of different countries under lorries, hiding in boats and crossing mountains by foot, just to arrive in the UK.

These experiences mean that by the time they are referred to Refugee Support Network, they have very different support and education needs from other young people in the UK.

The young people we work with are also different from the average young person because they are not yet free to move on from whatever trauma or suffering they have left behind. Rather, the asylum process forces them to revisit the exact events which changed their lives, forcing them to flee their home countries. They have to justify their need for protection from the UK by re-telling, over and over, the difficult things that have happened to them. For many, having to open up about the saddest and most traumatic events in their lives to complete strangers is a profoundly painful experience.

Lastly the majority of the young people we work with still do not know where they will end up once they turn 18. Most have temporary immigration status until then, at which point it gets reviewed. In the meantime they live with the, at times tortuous, uncertainty of whether they will be able to stay in the UK, or sent back to the place they fled from. This transitional period adds a level of anxiety which can impact all areas of life, including education.

The more unaccompanied asylum seekers I meet the more convinced I am that the young people we work with remain one of the most vulnerable groups of people in the UK. It is both exciting and a privilege to be part of the educational support of lives disrupted by conflict and persecution with hope for a better future.

We are continually grateful to all our educational mentors who build relationships with young asylum seekers across cultures and languages and offer a skill as vital as the English language. We’re always keen to hear from new volunteers, so if you want to meet some of the young people we work with and support them on their journey of education then do get in touch.

Keep checking the blog for more stories from the young people we work with.

Written by Hannah Elwyn, Mentoring Coordinator