Staring at the headlines, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
A little boy with dark hair, wearing a red t-shirt and navy shorts, lying face-down in the sand, waves lapping around his body.
Dead.
I felt sick – he was just two years old. Almost the same age as my youngest son, George.
It was September 2015 and the story of Syrian refugee Aylan Kurdi, who’d been found washed up on a beach in Turkey, had made headlines worldwide.
There was a global outcry – but of course it didn’t last. Soon people forgot about little Aylan.
Not me though, I couldn’t. I laid awake in bed at night, wondering about how desperate a parent would have to be to flee their country with their children. To take that risk.
As a busy working mum-of-three, I had my stresses, like everyone else, but I had a safe roof over my head, food and education for my children.
All I could think about was: what if Aylan had been one of my kids?
If I’m sad about something I have to take action, otherwise it eats me up – so I started researching ways to help.
I Googled and found a charity called Rooms for Refugees, which had a database of people willing to provide accommodation for refugees in their own homes.
I reached out to the organisation and they registered me on their database.
My husband James was supportive – he knows what I’m like if I’ve got a bee in my bonnet about something! Plus he has the biggest heart, and he’d been moved by Aylan’s story too.
At the time our three kids were still young, at three, six and seven, so we decided for safety’s sake to open our home to single women or mums with children.
Our first refugee came to stay in our spare room in October 2015. She was a young single woman who’d fled persecution because of her religion in Iran.
She’d been an accountant in her home country and I ended up supporting her through her exams so she could gain the right qualifications to work in the UK and support herself.
Then came families. Between 2015 and 2019 James and I opened our home to six mums and their children. Our kids grew accustomed to welcoming extra children to the house and enjoyed the additional playmates. They learnt a lot about different cultures too. And all of them soon became part of the family.
That was certainly the case with Agnessa*, now 30, who fled Albania in the back of a lorry and joined us in June 2019 with her two children, then three and one.
She’d been living in Home Office accommodation, but after being granted Right to Remain she had nowhere to go.
This happens a lot with asylum seekers who are not able to work to support themselves – they can only find work and secure their own accommodation after asylum is granted – so, during that time, some become homeless.
She and I quickly became friends – in fact she felt like a daughter to me – and our kids were like siblings.
I felt protective of her, in awe of her determination and strength. She was an incredible woman – unstoppable.
In 2021 it was Agnessa who brought home our next guest, after finding her sitting in the street on her suitcase with her children because she had nowhere to go. She knew I’d never turn a family this desperate away, and they ended up staying with us for three weeks.
‘One day you and I are going to do something bigger, as a team, to help even more women,’ I told Agnessa.
That chance came in summer 2023.
James and I had gone on holiday with friends to Majorca. I took a conversation card game with me, with prompts, and on our first morning at breakfast in the hotel I pulled a card.
‘What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?’ James read out.
‘I’d set up houses for refugee women to live in, so they don’t have to live in horrible hotels with nowhere to cook, do laundry, and no garden for their children to play in,’ I answered immediately.
This didn’t come as a surprise to him. It wasn’t the first time James and I had turned this over in our minds and talked about what we could do. But we didn’t discuss it any further that morning.
The next morning, I pulled another card – ‘Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?’
‘With 10 houses for refugee women, of course!’ I laughed.
‘We’d better get on with buying the first one then,’ James grinned, but he was serious.
We went back upstairs to our room after breakfast and used the hotel wifi to look on RightMove. We searched for houses with extra bathrooms and en suites, because that’s what families need, in affordable areas of London.
Then, there it was – a five-bed house in Twickenham with four bathrooms. It looked perfect.
Excitedly I called the estate agent and booked a viewing for the day after we got home.
James and I had been saving for our retirement dream – a holiday home somewhere sunny. Instead, we ploughed our money into our new venture.
‘We fancied the South of France – we ended up with a holiday home in Twickenham,’ I joked.
The sale went through in November 2023 and I called all the women and their children who had previously lived with us and asked for their advice on what to do with the house.
Over dinner we brainstormed what should be in each family room – things like a fridge, storage space, a child’s bed or cot, and a desk for studying.
When I asked what the children wanted most, one girl spoke up and said ‘mostly we just want other children to play with’.
Then we called in the builders and started renovating.
Meanwhile James and I set up a not-for-profit limited company, The Welcome Home Project, so social services and councils could place refugees with us.
Now each of our five family rooms has its own bathroom, and there’s a communal kitchen, lounge and garden. We’ve even got colour-coded crockery that matches the bedding to make it easier for families not to get their things mixed up.
I made Agnessa my general manager. Who better to support our refugees day-to-day and help them with job and school applications, sourcing clothing and food, and anything else to get their lives back on track than someone who’d been there and done it?
James and I live nearby in East Sheen, so in case of emergencies we’re not far away.
There are already two families living with us in our Twickenham house, and of course I’m hoping we fill up soon. My aim has always been to give women a safe homely space, with people who genuinely care.
James, our kids – Bea, now 16, Harry, 14, and George, 12 – and I all agree that Agnessa and the other women we’ve helped have changed our lives for the better.
Whatever we’ve given as a family, we’ve got back in spades, in the form of joy and genuine human connections.
When I think back to little Aylan, lying lifeless on that beach, it spurs me on. And the more I learn about temporary and emergency accommodation in the UK, the more broken I realise the system is.
One of my mums, the lady Agnessa found on the street sitting on her suitcase, spent 256 days in a hotel with nowhere to cook or refrigerate food. Our project aims to show that it is possible to provide decent accommodation that is run for the benefit of its guests and helps families out of a life of dependency.
We are funded by local councils and social services – the same bodies as those that fund stays in hotels – who have a duty to house the mums.
But we have seen first hand what a leg up can do. Our second mother tenaciously got her children 100% bursaries to a great school – the oldest got straight A-A*s in her GCSEs and is on course to become a doctor. Proof that the cycle of dependency can be defeated.
Just think what we could achieve if more people opened their hearts, and homes, to others.
*Name has been changed
As told to Jade Beecroft.
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