About 8,000 of the 122,000 people who hope to offer rooms in their homes to Ukrainian refugees joined a hastily organised online conference on Wednesday night to hear how they could be matched with families fleeing conflict.
A stream of questions poured in, reflecting an intense willingness to help and profound confusion about how the scheme will work and what hosting traumatised people will entail.
“Is there a way I can get a name of someone wanting to come to the UK?” “What about language difficulties?” “The government website says we would not need to feed refugees and they can claim benefits?” “What if we don’t fit well together?” “What if you have holiday planned, who helps them then?” “We live in the countryside, will this be OK?” “As an 80-year-old man on his own, is there a refugee category I could host?”
These were just a few of the myriad questions that were asked by the would-be hosts.
As the evening progressed it became clear that the matching website that will link people had yet to be fully launched, leaving attenders uncertain about how and when their desire to help would translate into practical action.
Three weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, more than 3 million people have fled the country, and so far the Home Office has granted visas to allow only about 6,000 to travel to Britain. The refugee hosting scheme launched this week has offered hope that the UK response to the humanitarian crisis may in time improve, but refugee organisations are cautious, uncertain whether to view the initiative as an inspirational drive to harness a burst of popular goodwill towards refugees or as an underwhelming attempt by the government to construct a “big society” approach, outsourcing its duties towards refugees to under-prepared, unsupported members of the public.
Some organisations that have run small-scale refugee hosting programmes for years are angry to have been named by the communities secretary, Michael Gove, without prior consultation, as places that can help match hosts with refugees. Others fear security concerns may be ignored in the race to approve homes. Some describe the scheme as shambolic. There is continued frustration that the UK is insisting people fleeing a war zone must apply for visas using an application process that, despite modest refinements, is still taking a long time.
Robina Qureshi, the director of the refugee homelessness charity Positive Action in Housing, said that at the moment the hosting scheme was a “dead end” because there was no system in place for matching host families with refugees. “The government has unleashed chaos upon chaos for the refugee hosting system,” she said. “Ukrainian refugees have contacted us, some were in Kyiv, some were in burning buildings, saying: ‘Please, can you desperately help us?’ We’re getting people calling us up from the UK and asking: ‘Could you get me a name of a Ukrainian refugee?’ But that’s not how we do things.”
The charity has a fastidious vetting and awareness-raising process, to make sure hosts are well informed about what they are taking on.
Lawyers are alarmed by an explosion of informal social media accounts offering to help match people with refugees. But most refugee organisations are attempting to swallow their doubts and do everything they can to try to make the scheme work, as it is clear that there is no better alternative scheme on offer.
“In principle we shouldn’t be outsourcing this work to random, untrained people who haven’t had any orientation process and apparently will have no home visits in advance,” said Jennifer Blair, an immigration lawyer. Last month she co-founded the Ukraine Advice project, with lawyers offering free advice to Ukrainians making their way here. “But it’s hard to see what the alternative would be. We understand this is being organised at pace; people are fleeing a war zone, they need to get to safety.”
The Afghan resettlement scheme, in which more than 15,000 people were airlifted from Kabul last August, is widely seen as a failure, with 12,000 people stuck in hotels and waiting for permanent homes. “The broader asylum system is really not functional at the moment; it’s overwhelmed, you can’t get appointments until July,” Blair said.
Charities question why the government is refusing to classify people fleeing war in Ukraine as refugees and to bring them into the asylum system. With parliament currently debating the nationality and borders bill, which will criminalise refugees who arrive in the UK uninvited, ministers are treading a difficult line between wanting to show support for people forced to leave Ukraine and pushing through legislation that weakens refugee rights.
“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good,” said Krish Kandiah, who launched the Sanctuary Foundation last month to help people offer their homes to people fleeing Ukraine, and who chaired Wednesday’s online meeting. “The refugee sector has been quite angry about the government’s response. I’m not a fan of the nationality and borders bill, but the mood of the nation is ‘let’s help these people’, so I’m taking a glass half full approach.”
His optimism was shared by most of the people participating in the meeting, who posted cheerful welcomes to each other. Only a few people voiced doubts: “The government proposal are dangerous and not thought through,” “the risk of abuse, human trafficking and modern slavery is immense.”
There was surprise from some when it emerged that details of how charities would help match hosts to people who need support had yet to be announced.
These concerns are echoed by people in the sector. Naccom, a network of 140 organisations that provide housing to people who have had difficulties with their asylum claims, and usually accommodate about 3,000 people a year who have been left homeless because of their immigration status, asks how the matching, vetting and safeguarding checks will be done.
The Department for Levelling Up advises people who do not currently know anyone whom they wish to sponsor to get in touch with charities, faith groups or local community organisations.
Gove said earlier this week: “We want to minimise bureaucracy and make the process as straightforward as possible while doing everything we can to ensure the safety of all involved.”
‘I’ve got a huge community of friends who want to help’
Viktoria Lyubarevich-Torkhova, a psychotherapist who lived in a village outside Kyiv, hopes the Homes for Ukraine scheme will allow her to travel to London when the next phase launches on Friday. She studied at Essex University, and when Russia invaded Ukraine a groups of university friends calling themselves “the Essex crew” came together to offer practical help to get her and her 13-year-old son, Miron Torkhov, to the UK.
She is staying with friends in Germany, settling her parents there, and waiting until the UK scheme begins to function. “I’ve got a huge community of friends who want to help. I’m just waiting until we can get a visa,” she said. One college friend, a police officer in London, has offered to sponsor her because he thought he was likely to pass the vetting process quickly as he is already routinely vetted for his work. He completed one stage of the online application process this week, he has been emailed a reference number and will be online on Friday morning to try to match his offer of a room with her application for a visa.
“I didn’t give it a moment’s thought. I’ve known Viktoria for over 20 years,” he said, asking not to be named. But he was surprised by how chaotic and ill-prepared the system appeared to be. “We knew this conflict was coming; we knew that potentially millions of refugees might be coming westward. We could have been a bit better prepped.”
