thread for those interested in refugee hosting/sponsorship

[EezyOozy]

I thought I would start a new thread about this as I have just heard on BBC news that they are opening up a web form tomorrow to express interest. Apparently families/households can claim £350 a month (I assume for increased expenses) and refugees will be eligible to claim or benefits and work. We have large a spare room but live rurally so whilst I will express interest I'm not sure we will be taken up on it.

I thought I would start a new thread for those who are interested and to follow the progress of the registration procedure/how this pans out in practice.

Posted here because it's the only place I know gets plenty traffic, I will probably be asking for this to be moved but don't know where to.

We will have two parents and a baby in a room.
We have a third room available but it’s on another floor and the home check man seemed to think the two rooms would be fine.

@Shiloh139 that’s really sad. So depressing that this government is adding so much stress to the lives of people who are already suffering horrible trauma. I hope you feel able to match with someone else (but it would be completely understandable if you felt too upset by the whole process). 😔

The council have passed our home today, despite the smaller of the two rooms being technically too small for a bedroom, so hopefully there's some flex

@TressiliansStone yes I’m in Scotland and got that email.

Ah thanks, hassletassle.

Did you go ahead and fill in the survey?

I've clicked but not made my way to the end of it, so don't know everything it asks.

Thanks@TheCountessofFitzdotterel and @VenusClapTrap

I think we will try and match with someone new but I'm taking a couple of days to kind of get myself together, before starting this all over again. I hope it will be easier next time as the visa processing seems to be running more smoothly for new applications.

I'm going to try and get a match through a different route too, and will specify mum and child (preferably a boy as I have boys) under 10 as I know from the council now that our double bedroom won't be classed as big enough for 2 people aged 10+.

Honestly though, it's very tempting to just say forget it, this has been too emotionally taxing and really distracted me from my job this past week or so. But I can't do that when I know there are people who do still need our help and my emotional stressors are nothing in comparison.

@TressiliansStone I actually found my own match through someone local so I haven't opened the survey, I just remember the cover email

I’m in Scotland too and I did fill in the survey. It didn’t really ask much, just how long we would host for, would we consent to a Disclosure check, have we checked if our mortgage company and home insurers would accept refugees etc. and did we consent to someone from the council inspecting our home.

Thanks Freezingtoes, that's extremely helpful. I'll go ahead and fill it in.

Please be careful - I had malware based on a v official looking link from the council

Just joining this. I have a young lady staying with us, but I am in a country that is currently not offering any financial assistance

So far so good. She’s obviously very nervous, unsure but is growing in confidence each day and taking plenty of free English lessons. I would highly recommend doing it, but only once you have really thought about it.

I have friends though with a totally different experience and I think this demonstrates the challenges but the profile of the person they have living with them is quite different.

I would urge anyone doing this to think very carefully about the right person for them and their family. You never truly know until you have someone living with you, but there are things you can consider before the decision is made.

Things like children or number of children are important as is where abouts they are coming from. Think about whether you and your family can support someone coming from an area that has seen very heavy fighting, whether you can cope with a single person or another family.

Hats off to any of you taking families, I think that’s just so generous

I would also add that the UK government have been nothing short of a disgrace. Whereas the Irish government are not providing financial assistance (to hosts, refugees are getting a welfare payment) they are at least making the process easy

I find these council inspections a bit intrusive, to be honest.

I am sponsoring an old, very close friend who I know for 20+ years and who I lived with before for 4 years when at uni. She's a professional, earns well and is very unlikely to stay with me for 6 months - will rent something as soon as practical. I am obviously not claiming a penny from the government. She had visited me many times before, so knows very well where she's going and where she's staying.

But now I need to explain toileting habits of our family to a stranger to ensure there's enough facilities if everyone has diarrhea at the same time. And have a DBS check. And then they will decide if it is better to stay with me or at on a mattress in a school gym in Poland.

I totally get the need to check hosts in the situation where they are complete strangers, but maybe there could have been an exception made for the cases where there's a long verifiable history of friendship.

It sounds like your home check was more intrusive than mine, Forinborin! We weren’t asked anything intrusive, it was more focused on smoke detectors and window locks.

In general I disagree with you as I would like to see more regulation rather than less. I get that it’s bonkers when you’re putting up an old friend but I would have been happy to be quizzed about how we know the people , why we’re doing this, what our expectations are, if it would help deter people who are doing it for the wrong reasons or have unrealistic expectations.

Our home check was fairly basic. We did get asked about number of bathrooms and whether they'd have their own. Not a lot else and they were flexible about the very small bedroom.

My Ukrainian guest arrives on Saturday, Single lady looking to get work here. Does anyone have any advice for me to help her settle in? CC is Oxfordshire.

Well, I am adding a bit of poetic interpretation around it, of course. I don't know, maybe bathroom use is a frequent topic of conflict in shared accommodation. And I don't have a separate bathroom for everyone who lives here, maybe it is also below standards.

I agree with you when it comes to complete strangers. I just think there's some space for more flexibility here.

I am just afraid I'll get turned down and some bureaucrat will decide that my friend is better off sleeping on the floor with 80+ people somewhere in Poland than coming to crash on my sofa.

Literally on your sofa? So a situation that wouldn’t be acceptable for a stranger so you seriously might fail the home check, even though as friends you know it should be fine for you?
If so I get your frustration. You fall between two stools there, as the family scheme doesn’t have requirements for standard of accommodation afaik.

The rules of the scheme clearly say you have to have a spare room for the guests. There's an FAQ where it says "can they stay on the sofa?" And the answer given is no, because that isn't considered suitable accommodation for six months

Son's visa and PTT letter came through today. Now trying to see if we can cancel mum's request to cancel her application (!) and instead escalate it as son's has been approved. Her application is still showing as pending so hopefully we can get the visa sorted before they ever get around to cancelling the application!

Good luck Shiloh. What a rollercoaster.

It is a separate room, but it is what used to be a (spare) living room. It has a bed (sofa bed), but it is on the ground floor. If a standard is whether it would be suitable for (say) a complete stranger to rent, the answer is probably no, it wouldn't. But for someone I flat shared with for 5 years before at uni, and then had plenty of time spent together in the same accommodation since - holidays, her business trips to London etc, I can guarantee it is ok.

On a separate topic, can I please ask everyone to seriously consider if you are indeed ready to host for 6 months. There are so many stories emerging now when people came but were asked to leave almost immediately for most bizarre of reasons. And they quite literally don't have anywhere else to go. I think so, so many people have massively overestimated their abilities to host complete strangers - small active and noisy kids, elderly with early stages of dementia...

Need a bit of advice here.
Okay so I've done my guests visa application and she has sent me all the documents. They need to be in pdf format. All are expect for the passport copies, including my own. I was approached to host this particular lovely lady by a British living Ukrainian here who found her on a WhatsApp group. The British Ukrainian said she would help with things. I don't have a computer and don't have word on my phone to be able to save the photos and resave as a pdf file. I've asked the British Ukrainian lady earlier today if she would do it for me and she said she would but it's nearly my bedtime and she hasn't and I chased it up and no reply I went to a Ukrainian lesson run by a local charity this evening and one of the people heading the charity said she would do it for me, but she was also very very busy sorting out other visa applications for different families so I don't know how long it could take her.
Does anyone have any ideas of how I can sort this, as I don't want to keep my guest waiting for her visa to go through? She has already had to wait for her kids' passports to arrive and they arrived yesterday. I was hoping all the documents would be uploaded by today at the latest.

Download one of free pdf editors to your phone and do it, it is a 10 sec job.

Please, don't send photos of your guests' id documents to some people you met at a charity lesson or someone from the local whatsapp group. Even if they are Ukrainian.