Today’s blog is not a Christmas story. However, Christmas is a time for storytelling, and also a time to contemplate how things may not always be what they seem. And so I want to share a story with you about a girl whom I have known for some time and about what happened to her over the past few months.
The girl is in her late teens, and she has lived in an institution for several years. As the COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions surrounding it took hold in her country, the children in the institution were completely isolated from the outside world, to protect them from infection. This also meant that during the summer holidays – when most years children who have families are allowed to spend a few weeks with them – no one was allowed to leave the institution and families were not allowed to come to visit.
After a few months, the girl’s mother started to request that her daughter be sent home to her. The team I work with, in the institution, who are responsible for looking for ways to safely and responsibly reintegrate children into their families, were not informed of this. They learned, after the fact, that the girl had been given permission to go to her mother and had been sent home. This was done without assessment, preparation, support or continued monitoring.
When the transition of care team learned that the girl had been rapidly returned to her family, they started to arrange permission to make a home visit, to see how the girl and her family were doing. All of this took time, so the girl had left the institution a few months before a home visit was made.
On this visit, the social worker was happy to find that the girl was indeed living with her mother and had not married yet. However, it soon turned out that all had not been well. When the girl arrived home, the family was approached by a woman – who, it later turned out, had also been encouraging the mother to ask for the girl to come home – who said that she would arrange a good marriage for the girl.
In order to do this, they were told, the girl had to come with her to the city. This was arranged. However, when they got to the city, the girl was placed in a family and made to work as a domestic servant. Then the woman contacted the mother to let her know that if she wanted the girl back, she would have to pay a large sum of money (amounting to several months wages). The girl was held for ransom and exploited in the meantime.
In the end, the mother managed to get the money and the girl was returned to her. And for the moment it looks like this story has a happy ending. With attempts being made to catch and arrest the woman who trafficked the girl, to prevent her doing this to others in the future, as she is known to have done in the past.
However, in many cases, the stories of children in these situations will not end so well. And rapid return, without assessment, preparation, support and monitoring significantly increases the risk of this kind of thing happening.
Just like not just Mary, but no pregnant woman should be turned away when she needs a place to give birth, no child should be simply pushed out of an institution without making sure that she ends up in a place where she will be safe and cared for.
Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it.
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