A mother has told how her teenage son has become depressed, isolated and malnourished after spending two years in limbo in a Home Office hotel.
The 18-year-old is said to have given up football and college and retreated from everyday life after struggling to sustain himself due to his poor diet.
His mother said the pair, who are originally from Trinidad, are living on bread, cheese and milk because the quality of food at the migrant hotel is so bad that it makes her son vomits after every meal.
Health professionals, including a GP and a psychiatrist, have warned the pair need to be housed in self-catered accommodation to help their low mood and dietary issues, but the requests have so far been rebuffed.
One GP letter from the local surgery, seen by The Independent, says the teenager “has not put on any weight in six months - even though he is growing”.
It added: “He says he vomits with each meal. He does show signs of vitamin deficiency with cracked lips and nails”.
Another letter from a different doctor at the local surgery explains that the mother “is not able to eat food given by [the] hotel she is staying in, due to nausea and vomiting it causes. She is not getting any privacy at the hotel and it is affecting her mental and physical health.”
A dietician also wrote to the hotel to ask that the family have access to healthy food, with a list including tuna, carrot, cabbage, peas, tomatoes, oranges, peaches and grapes.
The mother, who asked to be kept anonymous, said: “We live on bread, milk, cheese, and sometimes bananas and instant ramen noodles. Our bodies are weak, my son and myself are not eating properly, eating the same thing over and over, and at times you don’t even feel to eat.”
The mother, who has just completed an English language qualification and is about to start studying Maths, said of her son: “He got into a football academy, and he was so excited. He went to the training for a few times. He went the first day and when he came back he had nothing to eat except for bread. He said he couldn’t take his last bit of energy to play football, so he quit.
“The coach was calling him to try and get him back, but he made up his mind. He’s now suffering with depression because he’s not doing anything.”
“He used to open up to the psychiatrist but he doesn’t talk to him much anymore. That’s why they came together to do a supporting letter for him because they realised that he was deteriorating mentally and physically.”
The 40-year-old mother and her son claimed asylum in 2023 after arriving in the UK on a plane, having fled Trinidad after the son’s father was killed by gang violence.
The mother’s partner, who has helped raise the son from the age of two, is living in a separate Home Office hotel in London after arriving in the UK in 2024.
The family have asked to be reunited but are still living apart. They are unable to visit each other regularly because they can’t afford the train fares on their £9.95 a week allowance.
Describing the separation from her partner, she said: “Every time we see each other we only have a few hours to make it count. It has left a big void in our lives tremendously”.
The mother and son’s hotel, in Bedford, is managed by Clearsprings Ready Homes, one of the three companies that the Home Office contracts to provide accommodation for asylum seekers. Clearsprings run the services across the south of England, with a recent parliamentary committee report finding that the value for the 10-year contract for this region has soared from £0.7bn to £7bn since 2019.
Since 2019, Clearsprings and the two other asylum accommodation providers for the UK have made a combined profit of £383m, according to the National Audit Office.
In July, she said she called 111 when her son stopped talking to anyone, and had been spending months inside. The call operator persuaded him to go outside to play with children at the hotel, she said, but a disagreement caused him to spiral into further isolation.
Her son argued with two brothers and they told workers at the hotel reception that he had pulled a knife on them. “I got a call to come to the hotel reception and they told me that they had sent a report of the incident to the Home Office. My son said he didn’t have a knife and we asked to see the CCTV but the hotel workers said that the cameras weren’t working. I asked them to call the police because I wanted to get to the bottom of what was taking place.”
She said that the children admitted they had lied to the police, but the officers were not able to see what had happened because the cameras were broken. “Since that he has been even more withdrawn because he doesn’t know who to trust.”
The Independent has previously reported on cases of children experiencing malnourished and stunted growth in asylum hotels. In one case that was reported to MPs, a man who used a catheter was forced to spend upwards of four hours a day in the bathroom because hotel food was worsening his digestion. He requested a move and was not relocated and ended up calling emergency services twice due to pain.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “This government will close every asylum hotel. Work is well underway, with more suitable sites being brought forward to ease pressure on communities.
“We continue to work with police, community partners and hotel providers to address any concerns raised.”
Clearsprings Ready Homes directed requests for comment to the Home Office.
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