A statement of our policy and procedure framework. 

This body of documents is crucial as the foundation to professional standards being expected of our staff team, our purchasing authorities and our young people. We have sought to make these documents accessible by adding relevant examples, to explore why these policies exist, to include reference to the ‘feelings’ of the people required to implement them with the objective of making them a ‘living’ body of guidance which will be ‘easy reads’, understandable and clear in what is needed; they are to be updated and useful. 

Our policy documents are written to the young people, which gives the emphasis we have to them when our workers or allied professionals read them.

Introductory information and contract for residents provided in Sorani, Pashtu, Arabic, Vietnamese and Tigrinya. 

Click here to access. 

Ready for regulation and Inspection 

Main points:

• The Supported Accommodation/16+ sector has evolved without regulation or inspection.
• Criticism of the sector has been sustained and with justification.
• Some providers within the sector have been found to be failing in the fundamentals of keeping young people safe and provision of adequate accommodation and support
• From April 2023 Ofsted will be responsible for regulation and inspection of providers in the sector.
• From our inception we shall provide professional care and match, and exceed, the established standards of Registered Children Homes and Independent Fostering Agencies

Refuge recognises that guidance and regulations are coming to the supported accommodation sector, and from April 2023 providers will need to operate within a clear set of acceptable parameters and expectations. This brings this sector into line with Independent Fostering Agencies and Registered Children’s Homes. 

Two primary aspects have let down our sector, with Refuge not wanting to be associated with the deficits of others: the quality of accommodation and the safeguarding of vulnerable people. 

Refuge sees that this change in introduction regulation has been a long time coming and is now progressed on the back of many independent reports highlighting poor standards of care and a lack of adequate awareness of safeguarding. As a specific example of what is so plainly wrong, as a social worker, I took a call from a worker in supported accommodation, to tell me that a UASC young person who had been in the UK for only a matter of days, had ‘gone out with his uncle’. We had no awareness of the ‘uncle’ and no information had been requested of him before he left with our young person.  This happened on the same morning that the Children's Commissioner for England, Anne Longfield, had been reported saying children 'should be banned from unregulated care homes due to high degrees of criminal and sexual exploitation’. 

Unaccompanied asylum seekers are naive to the sophisticated approaches of exploiters, are by definition alone, and can have a desire to be given ‘things’ as some way to ‘feel’ that the loss they have experienced is ‘worth it’. UAS young people have been typically brought to the UK by people paid to ‘move’ them, within the obvious fact that they are illegally transported and highly vulnerable as they are fearful of officials, with this fear being sadly reinforced by open hostility from officials in various countries they pass through.  Money is paid, or owed, and threats to family are a method of exerting control even when the relative safety in our care is reached.  One young man 13 years of age from Afghanistan took over two years to say that not only was his adult brother no relative at all but that we had never even used or known his real name.  Mo Farah has only now, taking many years, told a similar story of being trafficked and given a new name, and admitted his fear that the Home Office will still seek to deport him. 

Refuge have already adopted and mirrored the policy and procedural framework of residential homes, and a wholly professional concern and tenacity to ensure we are protecting our young people in every way that we can. 

Staff are trained to follow their natural concern for keeping our young people safe by thinking in terms of what we ‘feel’ we should worry about, alongside a professional awareness of threat which is updated frequently. It is a strength that our staff often come from communities and backgrounds similar to our young people however we are conscious that this can come with a risk that the young people may see an implied ‘loyalty’ of background or religion between them and staff. For this reason, staff and young people are reminded that there can be ‘no secrets’.  

Our home provides the highest safety and comfort to our young people. 

We have questioned the term ‘supported’ in some providers we have witnessed. Our support is genuine and long lasting, and clearly expressed within our contract with purchasers and young people, and not motivated by financial gain or excess profits.

We welcome inspection with no notice from any purchasing authority and our staff and young people are open to enquiry, obviously subject to their consent. 

We take our responsibility to represent and promote this sector very seriously and will always strive to be better and are listening and adaptable. 

Updated:  July 2022 

Review: April 2023 

Safeguarding policy

Main points:

• Keeping you as safe as we can is fundamental. There is nothing more important.
• We keep you safe by sharing information and taking action, based on what we ‘feel’ as well as what we ‘know’.
• We will tell your social worker what we are worried about whether you give us permission to do so or not, until you are an adult in UK law at age 18.
• We do not tell people who do not have any responsibility to keep you safe.
• We will tell you what we have told them and why we felt you were not safe.

Updated:  July 2022 

Review: April 2023

Our therapeutic approach 

Main points: 

• many young people do not see talking therapy as useful or relevant to them, yet they have a clear need for this from their experiences of trauma and loss.
• We shall always offer therapy and encourage you to consider this within the context of confidentiality and it being a ‘safe space’ in a process that might help.
• We offer the broadest range of activities to help you manage ‘day to day’. to allow distraction or time to feel good about yourselves.

We recognise that most young people who have left their homes and families to travel without safe supervision across many countries will have therapeutic needs beyond that of other young people. We expect that our young people seeking asylum are more likely to have trauma in their history. 

We also see that they tend to come from communities and countries where ‘talking’ therapies are not widely understood. Many of the young people we have known have for example lost eyes, eyesight or broken bones in conflict and extreme stressful situations, for example when trying intervene in militia executing siblings or fathers yet these same young people are genuine in saying that they do not see a need to engage in therapy. 

We offer the broadest sense of ‘therapy’ in that we offer a wide range of choices that are designed to help you cope with difficult feelings, sometimes simply through distraction as well as more direct interventions to help you feel you can live with what has happened, and is happening, to you.  

The list of activities we offer, and provide equipment to all, has been built around what other young people have asked for and what we hope they will more easily engage with: 

• Gym membership
• Fishing tackle
• Football sessions
• Swimming
• Guitars – electric and acoustic – and tuition
• Drum kit – and tuition
• Gardening – including access to an allotment
• Looking after chickens
• Care of horses
• Multi-gym weights

We shall also fund two hours weekly of art therapy via an external provider if this is considered useful and has the consent of the young person. 

Where it is indicated we shall also seek counselling and medication support via GP appointments and/or make a request of social worker to refer you to CAMHS (NHS Community Adolescent Mental Health Service). We shall always seek the consent of the young person for this referral however, even if this consent is not immediately available or given, we shall still make a judgement, in consultation with your allocated social worker, to seek support if we see that they are suffering. 

Updated:  July 2022 

Review: April 2023

Reporting of missing and vulnerable; and protection from traffickers and exploitation

Main points: 

• Our duty to keep you safe involves us telling the police if we are worried about you.
• The police in the UK are not just there to deal with crimes but also have legal powers to act when people are at risk but not committing any crime. They can go into a house for example, when social workers or our staff cannot do so.
• There are people in the UK who are not safe people and will use young people for their own benefit, such as for sex, or as cheap or illegal workers.
• We will always tell your social workers, and probably the police, when we think you are at risk, even when you might not think you are at risk.
• We will always contact your social workers, and the police, when we think you are acting in a way that causes us to worry or are out late and we cannot get hold of you – for example, if you say you are going to harm yourself or are acting in a way that we worry about, are mixing with people who we think are ‘using you’ or are out later than we expect and are not answering your phone.
• If you have told us where you are and we are sure that your social worker has said this is a safe place then we will not have to tell the police. You can stay out if we have obtained permission from your social worker.
• All our young people know that there is a time when you need to be back in our home.
• This procedure is followed regardless of how we might ‘perceive’ our young people. A young person can be emotional stable and mature on one day but this can change at very short notice and with information that we may not be aware of. New information and new contacts can bring about immediate risks that was simply not present for that young person yesterday.
• Whilst we cannot always keep people safe and bad things will still happen to some people, we will always know that the answer to the question ‘should we have done something else?’ will be that we did ‘everything we could’.

Updated:  July 2022 

Review: April 2023

Health and Safety Policy, incorporating First Aid

Updated: July 2022

Review: April 2023

Incident reporting

Main Points: 

• we must keep a record of incidents within the home even if these appear quite minor
• an incident is something that would not happen within the normal day to day running of the home and may cause, or potentially cause, injury to a person whether they live here, are staff or are visiting
• we keep this record so we can understand and remove threat
• staff are obligated to report any incident to the manager either through email or by calling Mick, dependent upon urgency and level of risk. Staff should discuss whether something is an incident.

Environmental awareness

Main points:

• We think that climate change is real and being caused by what we, as humans, do.
• The people who are most harmed by this change in the world’s climate are poor people and those who live in parts of the world where heat is drying out the lakes and rivers, where land is easily flooded by rising sea levels or where extreme weather is more common.
• We want you to understand that what you and I do in the UK affects the whole world.
• Using energy such as leaving the heating on, driving cars, using water you don’t need, throwing away plastic bottles and not reusing things has a link with what is happening in the UK and the rest of world and the suffering of people.

Updated:  July 2022 

Review: April 2023

Positive about diversity 

Main points:

• Every human being on this planet is unique.
• Every human being, whoever they are, is important and what they think and feel is valuable.
• Every human being has something to offer to the others that will help the others to develop and understand each other better.
• The UK is a better place by having people who are seeking asylum here.
• The UK has laws that aim to allow people to live a life where choices are open to them to be themselves. Being ‘yourself’ is basic to being a happy person.
• ‘Being yourself’ means being able to follow a religion, or have no religion, love who you want to love, have the same opportunities to do the job you want to do as everyone else, or your abilities to look after yourself.
• We will always act where we see people who do not respect another’s freedom trying to stop people achieving this happiness. This even means you, if you live with us, or our staff team.
• We will first want someone to talk about what they believe and consider that what they believe is harming someone else and seek to start a process where they change what they think.
• We respect that people may hold views about how others should live but cannot let that person use these beliefs to stop another person from having their freedom to live and believe how they want.
• If they cannot change how they feel, even if it based on beliefs they hold as very important, then we may need to say that that person cannot stay with us any longer.
• We cannot compromise on views that restrict and harm others.

Updated:  July 2022 

Review: April 2023

Drugs and alcohol use 

Main points:

• The UK has always had a culture involving alcohol use. This is not the same in many parts of the worlds.
• Substance misuse is use of alcohol, other drugs such as cannabis, amphetamine, ecstasy, cocaine and heroin as well as some medications like sedatives and ketamine, and substances that are legal dependent upon someone’s age, such as tobacco and sheesha, always cause some harm.
• Harm can be financial as cost or debt, to their physical or mental health, the risks of breaking the law or damage in the relationships the person using the substances has with important people.
• The UK has developed a way of trying to manage these harms and trying to reduce the risks, for example, licensing laws, taxes to increase the cost and free services to help people who use substances, even the illegal ones; as well as the laws that can punish people who do use.
• The UK has accepted that we cannot just stop people using substances with the things that are mentioned above.
• We know that you will leave our home at some point and we hope will live in the UK culture. What we do know whilst you are with us is two things: we seek to help you to manage the use of substances by having a simple rule that none of them are to be brought into our home and where we see that you are using them outside of the home we shall talk to you about them, understanding why you feel you want to use them and talking about the harms, and get help for you if the harm is actually or likely to stop you achieving what you can when you leave us.
• Our staff will also follow these rules when at work.

Updated:  July 2022 

Review: April 2023

Working with the Prevent programme 

Main points: 

• Our staff understand the programme and have contact details for the people who operate the programme locally.
• Our staff are trained to see where a referral may be necessary and have confidence to see where a referral is not required.
• All concerns that a referral may be necessary will be discussed between worker and manager and documented, even where the decision is to not refer to Prevent.
• All referrals to Prevent will be made by the Manager.

Updated:  July 2022 

Review: April 2023

Working with the voluntary sector 

Main points:

• The voluntary sector in the UK is a forefront of promoting the needs of asylum seekers, seeking as they do to operate outside of national or local government.
• National organisations such as the Red Cross, Refugee Council and Coram can help our young people by adding to what is being provided already within their care plans.
• Local voluntary sector organisations such as the Freedom Youth Club and After 18 services offering something to our young people that we cannot.
• Unless in exceptional circumstances, with reasons that will be documented, we will always seek the support of Red Cross and/or Refugee Council service to young people within the first four weeks of a young person moving to us.
• Refuge will build contacts with the Freedom Youth Club and After 18 education services to enable our young people to easily access what the valuable organisations offer them.
• We may seek to fund raise, or simply donate, to the voluntary sector providers.

Updated:  July 2022 

Review: April 2023

Staff policies: 

Staff recruitment and retention 

Substance misuse  

Staff training, support and progression

AND, if you want, take a look at Mick's book:  

"The Really Useful Guide to Alcohol and Other Drugs - and how to help someone" 

www.amazon.co.uk/Really-Useful-Guide-Alcohol-Other/dp/1520503776/ref=sr_1_2?qid=1659548380&refinements=p_27%3AMick+Gregg&s=books&sr=1-2

or if you ask, Mick will send you a PDF copy for free