Sixteen Year Old with No Previous Schooling

[highandrandom]

We've just started back for the year, and I've had a week with my new classes.  While I'm used to teaching kids with learning difficulties and those from 'at-risk' backgrounds, I have a new student in my Year 11 class this year that I have no idea how to approach. He's grown up in a commune overseas, and was removed earlier this year from his parents due to the fact that the commune was pretty big on drug use and not so much with any form of formal education.  As such, I have a sixteen year old in my class of 28 who can write his name, but not a whole lot else.  He's been put into the custody of grandparents he's never met before, and is understandably very angry, detoxing (hopefully) and completely lost in a school situation.  My project at the moment is simply keeping him in a chair - because the rest of the class is fairly high-need behaviour wise - and I certainly don't have time to work on basics like letter formations with him.  He's aggressive and can be quite abusive, and while I've called home a couple of times this week to try and seek assistance, from what I can tell, the grandparents are pretty much throwing their hands in the air, too.

We have some limited aid support at the school which all feeds through a central 'learning centre', and the thing is, the kids need to agree to go, and he won't. The same goes for counseling.  I am going to have this kid in my class for two years unless he drops out (our leaving age is 17 - so it will be a year at least) or simply stops showing up. I have zero time to go over basics with him when I need to prepare the rest of my class for their university entrance exams in what is not an easy course.

I'm absolutely lost as to what to do with this kid. I'm teaching a poetry analysis unit at the moment. We're kind of past basic sentence structure. Any ideas?