Fusing horizons: Reflections on caring for asylum seeking and refugee youth

Global movement has led to the need to care for thousands of displaced children and youth. Since late 2016 my family and I have been foster carers for an unaccompanied minor seeking political asylum and subsequent refugee status. This experience has afforded unique insights into the lives and needs of asylum-seeking and refugee youngsters and to the systems that come to frame their lives. I offer here a reflexive account of my own experiences in the hope that it might cast some light on the wider context of how we might care for such youngsters. For me, this has involved a continual fusing of horizons between past and present and between practical responses to everyday care informed by an awareness of the cultural context that frames these. My conclusion is that such work requires a child and youth care orientation, foregrounding ideas of everyday life within a context of cultural safety.