News

Staying with a host family for the first time can make students feel nervous. Rest assured, many WHG host families have been hosting our students for many years and are very experienced at welcoming students into thier home and helping them to settle in. Peter has just experienced his first stay with a WHG host family at Mr and Mrs Oates. He wrote in their guest book and the host even sent us an email about Peter's stay and their experience as a WHG host family.

'We've been hosting for White House Guardians since 2018 and we thoroughly enjoy having your students staying with us, I can't imagine not hosting students now. We are a multicultural family, my husband's family are Hong Kong Chinese and mine are British White. Chatting with students from different countries and learning about the cultural similarities and differences is interesting, often surprising and a great gift to give to our own teenage children. Over the years we've hosted longer term state students, along with private students across holidays and exeat weekends. During the Covid-19 pandemic, we also hosted students who were unable to travel home because of flight restrictions. The main reason I continue to host for WHG is the amazing support that your local co-ordinator Stef gives me. She is super responsive to whats app messages and when we speak to each other, she is happy to chat and we have built a strong, supportive and friendly relationship that is often missing in other agencies I work with. This makes you stand out as an agency and I always feel that I want to help in any way that I can when Stef calls. Her care and compassion for her students is real and she puts this same committment and enthusiasm into supporting me as a host family. 

We like to keep a photo memory book when students stay with us and all the students that visit also have the option to write a little comment in our student comment book. This is a great memory for us, allows everyone to remember the fun activities we've done together, especially when students have repeated stays with us, or the funny situations that have happened. The next students can also see what others think of our home and hopefully this makes new arrivals instantly feel a little more relaxed. Here is a comment from Peter who stayed with us in the February half term 2023. Peter has a great sense of humour and understands English sarcasm very well - in amongst his comment he talks about our homemade crumble. Just to say that he didn't nearly die from this!! But he did try something that he wasn't sure he'd like, he now nows that he definitely doesn't but staying with host families is all about embracing new experiences and making new memories. Crumpet is our Golden Retriever dog that very much likes to retrieve food by the dinner table, if students are around!!'