A teenager wants to do an apprenticeship to help secure a job in pharmacy after arriving in the UK as an asylum seeker. 

16-year-old Arya Said completed his journey from Erbil, a city in northern Iraq, to the UK one year ago with his father. 

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He was sent to Stoke where he has been getting educational support from the Citizens Advice Staffordshire North & Stoke-on-Trent’s (CASNS) Into Schools scheme that helps asylum seeking children in Stoke to access schools. 

“I’m looking forward to hopefully being a pharmacy technician and being able to provide for people and help them out,” Said told C+D. 

He said the scheme has “helped me to start in high school and apply for bursaries and made sure I had everything I needed for school”. 

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Said is studying maths, English and health and social care, and says being in the UK is “lovely”. 

He praised the scheme for supporting him in having “a chance to go to school and have opportunities like every other child”. 

Vital help 

Into Schools started in 2003 and has helped nearly 2,000 children who have arrived in Stoke since then. 

The number of children the scheme helps doubled from 2022, after the Home Office commissioned two hotels to host asylum seeking families in the city.  

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Said said his journey with his father from Erbil was a “really hard trek” and the journey from France to England “was the worst bit”. 

It took 11 hours for him and his father to be picked up from a boat travelling to the UK. 

“One of those drones flew over us twice and then there was a helicopter that came to help us and people from British Coastguard picked us up,” he said. 

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CASNS chief executive Craig Browne said the Into Schools project is a “vital resource” for helping families “coming from difficult circumstances” and children to “blossom into adults with a future in our community”. 

“We support children to learn English, integrate into our society, and have a fresh chance at a new life,” he added. 

In July, C+D spoke to an MPharm student on her pharmacy journey that started out as a delivery driver and has led her to win a student award.