I didn't read the source of the news at first, a British paper. Till the end I thought that this was something that happened in the U.S. and I wondered why would you post it here.
I remember once, while I was in London, some friends of my parents got in touch with me to ask me for a favour. Their young daughter was coming to England for a Summer English course. It had been arranged from Spain through one English language school. She was going to Oxford. Instead of arriving on the scheduled date, she arrived 3 days earlier, during which I should provide her with accommodation in London and then drive her to Oxford to check the facilities and the British family which she had to stay with.
As we arrived to Oxford, I rang up the school and asked them to confirm the address of the family house. They said that I should take her to the school offices first and then they would take her to the family. To make it short, I said that I was her cousin and that my uncle had instructed me to absolutely check her in with the family myself. They couldn't argue any further.
After a while asking for directions, we arrived to a council flat area. Not what you would have expected from a rather expensive course package. She had gone from disappointed to nervous in just a few minutes. She asked me not to leave her there. I calmed her down and told her that I wouldn't, but that I wanted to check to the last detail before going to the school to get her a better suited accommodation.
Bingo. As I rang the bell an 18 to 20 year old Black guy opened. I told him that I was looking for that family. She was looking straight at me with her eyes wide opened and moving her head in badly dissimulated way, as if saying please get me out of here now. I told the Black guy that there had to be a mistake because we were looking for a native English speaking family... he tried to speak, but I cut him and said that I'd rather speak to the school managers.
I knew what to expect. A mixture of "progressist" (code name for leftist) and self-righteous English. If you give them a small escape, they'll slip through it. So I went to the school in rage... I did mention the fact that they had been paid to place her with a native family and that I had few doubts that an Afro-Caribbean was a native. That froze them, as I expected. But then I insisted most in the fact that they had not been paid to leave a young teenage girl who barely spoke the language, in a rough neighbourhood, in a house with an 18 year old Black guy.
They tried to assure me... but they understood that an anti-racist speech was going to leave me cold. They would look for another family and in the meantime... I said that after this shocking experience I would rather she stayed in the school building, which had a fairly decent on-board accommodation, or else fly back to Spain.
Well, a lesson there for anyone who plans his child to go to learn English to England.
In the meantime, one of my sisters was learning English in Ireland, where she eventually spent two fantastic years and all the people around her were Irish. But not everyone has a mother who is very aware of her Catholic faith and culture.
P.S. There was no need to pay for an expensive school to be safe. Back at the time there was a cheap alternative for bedsits in London, with an agency called Meeting Point. But maybe some father would rather leave his daughter to her fate than with an agency run then by a man of very strong values, a known Italian Fascist, Massimo Morsello.