Migrants posing as children are pushing foster carers to breaking point

As a foster carer, one of the first instructions we’re given in training is that we must not, under any circumstances, agree to collude in secrets with the children we care for. If a child I’m looking after asks me to keep a secret, I tell him or her gently that surprises are nice things to share, but secrets don’t keep us safe.

Yet when one of us accepts a new placement and the ‘boy’ joining the family has stubble, chest hair and a six-pack, we’re supposed to nod along. We’re supposed to accept that this physically mature, testosterone-fuelled young man is just 14. We’re not supposed to worry that he very likely comes from a culture that has vastly different attitudes to young women and girls to our own. Instead, we’re meant to simply ask, ‘How was your day at school?’. Any diversion from the script would likely be met with retraining, perhaps even disciplinary action. In other words, we are being asked to collude in a lie.

We sit there at the regular social events we organise so that the children can meet others in the same situation – a summer fair with a magician for entertainment, a barbecue with face-painting – and none of us dares pass comment that the lad on the bouncy castle looks like he might actually be someone’s dad. It’s only when the social workers are safely out of earshot that we might raise an eyebrow and whisper that the young man in question really shouldn’t be on a family placement, spending his mornings on a seat next to Year Nine girls.

I have no idea whether the 14-year-old Iranian placed in foster care in Bedfordshire last June after arriving via small boat was in fact that age, or whether he was merely claiming to be a minor to access the softer end of the system. What I do know is that three months after landing, he raped a 14-year-old girl, and then bragged about it on social media. The victim and her attacker went to the same school. He was convicted in January and, in March, he was spared jail. He was instead sentenced to a youth-rehabilitation order on the condition that he ‘learn about consent’.

We have a serious problem on our hands. On the weekend, GB News reported that 10 ‘child migrants’ under the care of the Kent County Council who were set to be sent to foster homes were, in fact, adults. An earlier investigation, also by GB News, revealed that thousands of illegal immigrants have lied about their age in order to be classified as ‘unaccompanied minors’. Even when local councils try to raise objections about the supposed age of migrants, they are often undermined by the courts.

Foster care in England is stretched to breaking point. As of the end of March 2025, there were 6,540 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) in the system, a decrease on the previous year, but still sharply up from the 5,080 in 2020. Unaccompanied minors make up eight per cent of the total looked-after population of 81,770, and two-thirds of those children are in foster care. Ninety-four per cent of UASC are male and most are older teenagers. Thirty-eight per cent are placed in foster families, one per cent in children’s homes, the rest in supported accommodation. Some older UASC are housed in hotels with social-worker oversight, and local authorities are breaking at the seams.

Meanwhile, the number of fostering households keeps falling, down seven per cent since 2021. Some might say foster carers have a choice as to whether to accept these placements. In theory, we do. But in practice, experienced carers are expected to take their turn on the emergency rota, providing 24/7 care so that when a distraught child is lifted from his or her bed at midnight by someone in uniform, there is somewhere safe to land. I’ve taken many children in those exact circumstances. Most of us are only too happy to help. But we have also been caught out, accepting placements that feel far too complex for a family home because, if you’re on the rota, you’re not allowed to say no.

Desperate social workers sometimes do what they can to game the system. I’ve refused a placement because a child’s needs simply wouldn’t fit with the other children in my house, only for a child with an identical profile to appear at 5pm on a Friday, when the emergency rota kicks in.

I became a foster carer because I wanted to help as many vulnerable children as possible. Increasingly, however, it feels as though we’re throwing the net ever wider, stretching finite resources to breaking point. There is something beautiful about a country with the compassion to wrap a stranger’s child in a blanket and offer them sanctuary. But there is a world of difference between taking in a terrified five-year-old and extending that same welcome to a strapping male who may be several years older than he claims.

The state has a duty of care to the children it removes from their birth families, to the girls across the country who have a right to feel safe at school, and to the foster carers who are burning out under the weight of unreasonable demands. The state does not have a duty of care to look after men who have arrived in Britain illegally and then claim to be children. Pretending otherwise isn’t compassionate, and we need to stop keeping secrets and say so.

We carers will keep opening our homes and hearts, listening out for the midnight knock on the door. But we shouldn’t have to pretend that every ‘14-year-old’ who arrives in Britain illegally is the same as the broken little boy who needs a mug of cocoa, a warm bath and a bedtime story.

Allowing young men into foster homes is betraying the goodwill and compassion of carers. We need another solution.

Rosie Lewis is a foster carer and writer. Read her Substack here.