Fighting for our children’s safety

We, Mary & Cat the mamas, have started this page as we are fighting to keep our five children safely together in our family who may be at risk of deportation.

Here’s our story

In January 2012 we first set eyes on Soma and Anish in the middle of the jungle in rural India. Soma, aged 7 ish, had severe bilateral clubfoot and was hobbling around painfully on his deformed ankles, supported by his little brother Anish who was around 5 years old.

Cat and I are paediatricians and ran a free, rural paediatric clinic in that area. Soma became a patient of ours and we were able to get him into surgery for correction of his deformities.

To cut a very long story short, and without sharing too much of their difficult and tragic personal stories, Soma ended up in our guardianship due to it not being safe to return to a family member.

‍ Our trio were finally adopted after many battles.

Over the past 11 years, through guardianship, foster care and eventually adoption, Soma, Anish and their younger sister Pumi finally had their wish granted. To be safe in a loving family forever, without being split up from each other. Our trio are an absolute joy to parent. They are incredibly resilient, caring and thoughtful teenagers who are ready to face the future with joy and optimism, despite different challenges ahead.

Josh came along!

Josh joined the family in 2016 as an abandoned 5 month old baby with hydrocephalus who was being starved to death. Incredibly he survived, had two neurosurgeries and is a cheeky, joyful little 7 year old!

Due to significant brain damage from trauma and meningitis, Josh has been left with a number of significant challenges. He is autistic, non verbal yet noisy too! He is fed entirely by a tube in his stomach. Josh has a VP shunt that drains the excess fluid from around his brain into his abdomen. Josh needs 24/7 support and supervision from his family but is an absolutely loveable little character!

The gift of Jesse

Little Jesse arrived unexpectedly in Jan 2021 on our doorstep in India. Jesse was 2.5 years old yet weighed the weight of a newborn. He had suffered horrific trauma and starvation which resulted in catastrophic brain damage. Initially he was unconscious and we thought he would die, however our little superhero ‍ pulled though and lived!

Jesse is now nearly 5 years old and sadly has very little brain tissue, it is a miracle he is alive. He is blind, unable to walk or talk and is fed solely by a tube in his stomach. However this boy brings a smile to the face of everyone who meets him. Jesse knows his mamas’ voices very well and beams when we are with him. He LOVES cuddles, bath tub swims, and early morning giggles and chats - around 3.30am normally! Jesse has life limiting conditions so every day we have with him is a gift we don’t take for granted.

What happened next

Finally our children had the security and love of their forever family that they all so deserved, completing their adoptions in India in November 2022. We thought the battles were over.

We made plans to fly to the UK for a much needed 5 month sabbatical for the exhausted mamas after being in India for 3.5 yrs throughout the covid pandemic and adoptions. Our kids were so excited to finally be able to meet our UK families and continue to recover from the many traumas they had been through.

However at the border, on leaving India, everything changed.

We had our employment visas unexpectedly cancelled, and were informed that our children would not be able to return to India unless they became British citizens. It was a devastating blow for us all as we had been living in India for the past 17 years, and applying for British citizenship for the children had not been something we were considering due to us being resident in India.

So what now?

So 5 months on we find ourselves with an unexpected costly relocation to the UK for this next season. We have needed to instruct an immigration lawyer in London to deal with our complicated case with the Home Office.

The general consensus is that the 4 children who are under 18, considered dependants, will most likely get British citizenship we hope. It is a lengthy procedure and costly but one we hope to get to the end of within the next 12 months.

Soma however is now 18, which means that his case is looked at by the Home office as an independent case without his mum included in it. We have been advised that his case will probably be denied by the Home office and we will then need to go to appeal. If the appeal fails, then it is very likely Soma would be sent back to India on his own, meaning he would be unable to return to the UK on a visitor visa. Soma has no legal family in India. (He is absolutely devastated by this news, once the adoption was complete we and him thought that his safety in our family was final.)

We of course, with our lawyer, are doing everything we can for this not to happen.

How can you help?

The minimum immigration lawyer and Home Office fees comes to a staggering £15,000 and will likely increase if Soma’s case becomes more complex.

Please can you consider giving to help keep our family together as we simply do not have these funds.

It’s really hard for us to ask for financial help personally, we nearly didn’t write this. However we will do anything for our children to not experience any more preventable trauma and uncertainty. They deserve the world and they deserve the simple human right to have a family.

Thank you so much, from the bottom of our hearts, love Mary and Cat xx