The sentencing this week of Jan Jahanzeb and Israr Niazal for the rape of a 15-year-old girl in Leamington Spa has reignited the immigration debate. The two 17-year-old Afghans arrived in the country by small boat, claimed to be minors, and were duly absorbed into the British care system before they committed this horrific crime.

We continue to ask ordinary families, often single women like me, renting modest semis, to absorb adolescents who may speak no English, observe strict religious codes, and carry more trauma than most adults ever will

But behind the justified outrage, a quieter, more uncomfortable truth has been forgotten: the care system we ask to absorb these young men was never designed for them and everyone is paying the price.

It’s not hard-hearted to point out that a strapping youth who has crossed several safe countries in the company of smugglers is rather different to a shivering toddler in a foil blanket rescued at sea. The first is likely to have seen things no child should, the second is, in fact, a child. Both deserve compassion, but only one fits the model of ‘looked-after child’ that still governs fostering in this country. It’s an obvious mismatch that shouldn’t be controversial to mention.

I have been a foster carer for 20 years. I have taken in babies born addicted to heroin, toddlers who spoke only Romanian, and once a ten-year-old boy who arrived clutching a plastic bag containing everything he owned: two T-shirts and a photograph of a woman he said was his mother, though no one ever discovered whether she was alive or dead. I thought I had seen the full spectrum of human distress. Then came the unaccompanied asylum-seeking teenagers.

Some stories end better than others. Alem*, a 15-year-old Eritrean, arrived refusing to eat from plates that........

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