People offering rooms to refugees

[Decorbreadthegingerate]

Been on a page that’s trying to match Ukrainian refugees with potential sponsors (weighing this up personally, as we do have room, but wondering if taking in a traumatised person so far from home may do more harm than good and there are more effective ways to help). Anyway - so many of the posts just make me feel a bit weird. Lots of self-congratulatory, saviour complex stuff e.g ‘hello darling, we live in beautiful [random town far from a city] and have a trampoline and a hot tub a huge garden and three lovely golden retrievers. Our children can’t wait for a playmate and we would love to welcome you and your little one into our happy home’ (insert cheesy Christmas pyjama family photo because that’s going to make a woman whose been separated from her partner and loved ones feel great)

And that’s before you get to the dodgy posts from single men who have a spare room in their dingy, dirty flat for “a woman in their 20s or 30s”

AIBU to think that it’s all a bit unseemly (genuine folk aside) and wrong

I think it's OK. It's inconvenient and hard to host so let them brag if the need to. They're doing a good job in general.

Can I pick cheesy family with labs please over dirty flat with man on his own.

@FrecklesMalone

Can I pick cheesy family with labs please over dirty flat with man on his own.

Really what if you were expected to cook and clean and look after the kids and the dog and the creepy father tried it on with you every time his back is turned? Or the man in the ‘dirty’ flat who is out at work 10 hours a day and lets you get on with what ever you want and has a mix of lovely friends who take you under their wing?

I don't mind the photos- I think seeing the faces of the people offering you a home might be quite helpful (although totally agree with the safeguarding worries).

The whole FB thing has made me quite uncomfortable in lots of ways though. I also think a lot of the Brits on there need to calm the fuck down, stop replying to every request for help with completely inappropriate offers and acting like it's a dating site. I know people are very keen to help and I'm sure that's part of it but they need to remember that they are talking to traumatised people and that this is just the very beginning of a refugee crisis that could last months or years. There is plenty of time to help, you don't need to respond to every single post asking for a single room in London with eight paragraphs about your lovely house in North Wales. I've even seen people starting to grumble on FB about refugees not saying thank you, ffs, and being keener on a room in London than in their sodding static caravan in the Lake District.

@Ivyonafence

I have more time for people making an effort to help than I do for people standing on the sidelines, poking holes and finding fault while congratulating themselves on their 'critical thinking' and general superiority.

There is no perfect solution - welcome to the refugee experience. It's messy and dangerous and full of people quickly doing what they can to survive and hopefully help others to do the same. There are some bad apples, but that's all the more reason for good people to rush in, not stay away.

When your house is on fire you don't care if you're leaving through the door or a window. You just need to get out.

Good for you for having spare funds and a large home in a safe country. I hope you do something useful with those things.

I work in this sector and I don’t recognise your description of chaotic all hands to the pumps situation at all. It’s a quixotic idea of the sector but not really realistic in my experience.

Asylum and refugee accommodation up until this point has been fairly structured and at the very least well vetted. (By the way this is NOT me defending the current system).

The thing that gets me are posts of a small sofa bed, cramped rooms, overcrowded conditions, unsuitable locations… all being offered with the best intentions, but all screams “beggars can’t be choosers” and that people fleeing should be eternally grateful to kip on the dodgy sofa for months on end.

These conditions aren’t sustainable for 6 months. People being accommodated need dignity and privacy as well as good provision of wrap around support.

I really don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, but there is just so much naivety. And whilst I believe that the vast majority of people are doing this for the right reasons, I don’t think we should put their feelings above the dignity of refugees who this is supposed to all be about.

[quote Decorbreadthegingerate]@Ivyonafence well my (still-living) grandparents are refugees so I have some idea of how they felt, but that doesn’t prove much anyway.

Are you so privileged you can't even hypothetically picture a situation where you have to make do instead of having your preferences and timeline catered to? this is very sad to read. I don’t want those coming over here to have to ‘make do’. We owe them more than that. There’s a difference between reacting promptly to a crisis and throwing stuff their way that will do more harm than good.[/quote]
I agree they should have more than that.

So why didn't you start a thread asking for people to suggest how to improve the lives and support the settlement of these refugees?

Your statements discourage people from supporting these people. It is negative in tone.

If you are full of empathy and better ideas, by all means share them.

But don't pretend that's what you were doing when you posted here.

Within a couple of hours of the scheme being launched so were the posts starting ...."will housing a refugee affect my benefits......"

Good to see people always have an eye on the main chance.

@NippyWoowoo Don’t you think that some refugees fleeing a war torn country may also have a host of mental problems?

[quote Decorbreadthegingerate]@Tiredcatmum I don’t care about being cool. I don’t care about sounding negative. I do care about people and ensuring they access genuine support. And despite having the funds and space I’m still not convinced offering my home is the right form of support, given the likely complex needs of these people. It’s called critical thinking and I highly recommend it, if you have the time.

And whether I have donated or done my part in any way means very little here as I can’t prove that to you and I’m not interested in performative acts or patting myself on the back.[/quote]
Britain hasn't enough funds or staff to deal with the complex needs of traumatised refugees. Neither does any other country, so we just have to do what we can. Offering a safe, clean space to live in, good food and warm clothes might be all we have to offer but it's a help. We have to remember not to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Just because we can't offer the perfect help doesn't mean to say we shouldn't offer any help at all.

Didn't take long for the virtue signalling accusations to start. When did MN become so reactionary and just plain sneery ? Not all of us live our lives on Facebook or Insta...
Saying that I am a bit bewildered by the whole shenanigans on some of the facebook pages. Lots of the single ukrainian women are young and effortlessly glamorous (who I doubt would want to stay with old fogeys like us) and some of the family photos in the UK are a bit 'look at us in our huge 5 bedroom mansion'.
It has become a bit of an unseemly bun fight with literally 20-30 people falling over themselves to offer accommodation to each post.

[quote SmallThingsEverywhere]@NippyWoowoo Don’t you think that some refugees fleeing a war torn country may also have a host of mental problems?[/quote]
Potentially, but as I said in my first post, offering space to a family is not the same as to a person off the street. Sorry. The statistics speak on this.

If we're thinking or 'homeless' as in rough sleeper types, for starters, the majority of those are male. Of course, chances are you could get a person who was homeless in Ukraine too before the war, but as I specifically mentioned families, chances of that are pretty slim

At the risk of being shat on from a great height...
I am offering 2 rooms in my house to a Ukrainian lady and her 2 small kids.
We have been matched by a local informal voluntary group. I have had a home visit from the co-ordinated, a retired social worker.
We have discussed needs, and a support package will be put in place including befriending by local Ukrainian mums, respite for me, help to get equipment eg cot, buggy, car seats, and cash for food until she can claim benefits. Local charities are providing cash and fundraising is also being organised.
Don't assume everyone going into this is doing it blind and unsupported.

@Ivyonafence

I have more time for people making an effort to help than I do for people standing on the sidelines, poking holes and finding fault while congratulating themselves on their 'critical thinking' and general superiority.

There is no perfect solution - welcome to the refugee experience. It's messy and dangerous and full of people quickly doing what they can to survive and hopefully help others to do the same. There are some bad apples, but that's all the more reason for good people to rush in, not stay away.

When your house is on fire you don't care if you're leaving through the door or a window. You just need to get out.

Good for you for having spare funds and a large home in a safe country. I hope you do something useful with those things.

The best post on this thread.

My mother will always spout a thousand reasons why she won’t give to this charity or the other, or that she heard charity shop workers benefit from all the good stuff people donate.

If you don’t want to give, or donate that’s your prerogative, but spare me the reasons why you think the charity or endeavour is not worthy of your support. I would rather give or offer a room in my home, and it turn out to be in vain rather than declare why I would not. That’s my prerogative too.

[quote Decorbreadthegingerate]@Tiredcatmum I don’t care about being cool. I don’t care about sounding negative. I do care about people and ensuring they access genuine support. And despite having the funds and space I’m still not convinced offering my home is the right form of support, given the likely complex needs of these people. It’s called critical thinking and I highly recommend it, if you have the time.

And whether I have donated or done my part in any way means very little here as I can’t prove that to you and I’m not interested in performative acts or patting myself on the back.[/quote]
For goodness sake. There are millions of refugees who need help now. A few of the offers of accommodation may not be coming from a genuine want to help but there is no time for the ridiculous naval gazing about whether people are being ' performative' in their offers of help ( whatever the fuck that means)

. Obviously screening out those who have bad intentions is important, including screening those offers from single men asking only for young women in their spare room which is clearly suspect .

Otherwise though, judging the demeanour and way of expressing themselves of people offering to help is a really shitty thing to do. No one says you need to help by offering accommodation ( I won't be doing this either for lots of reasons) but trying to make yourself look good by criticising others for having the 'wrong attitude' is pretty poor behaviour on your part op

As for the posts saying that these refugees need to be housed together in good hotels with trauma and educational support and with others form their own culture. Yes ideally but the actual alternative that will be offered in accommodation in shitty hotels with no support. Ask the majority of Afghani refugees who are still in this situation months after leaving Afghanistan if they think this works either . Or may ask the millions of refugees who live in large camps in neighbouring countries for years.

Never in the history of most of the world have refugees had an easy time whatever way they have been dealt with.

I don't know of the idea of offering accommodation in our homes is a good own but it is worth a try given that absolutely shit alternatives on offer.

I sort of agree with you, OP. In an ideal world, they would have as a minimum a separate self-contained living space with a lockable door and private toilet facilities (even if some facilities like cooking/bathrooms have to be shared). I can't see how anything else is really acceptable in ensuring dignity and safety for vulnerable people, especially if there are children involved. It makes me uneasy to think of only "lightly vetted" hosts having unsupervised access to vulnerable, traumatised women and children. And of course dispersing refugees across the country means they may struggle to access necessary services or to seek support from others in a similar position. I suppose from the government's perspective it's the "least worse" solution and a relatively cheap and easy way of being seen to be helping.

@decorbreadthegingerate
No I'm with you . I have twenty odd years working in safeguarding and I'm horrified about the slapdash, cheapo UK government. I worry about traumatised women and children being exposed to people with no knowledge of trauma and the potential for abuse.

@ChiaraRimini

At the risk of being shat on from a great height... I am offering 2 rooms in my house to a Ukrainian lady and her 2 small kids. We have been matched by a local informal voluntary group. I have had a home visit from the co-ordinated, a retired social worker. We have discussed needs, and a support package will be put in place including befriending by local Ukrainian mums, respite for me, help to get equipment eg cot, buggy, car seats, and cash for food until she can claim benefits. Local charities are providing cash and fundraising is also being organised. Don't assume everyone going into this is doing it blind and unsupported.

This is amazing

I’ve just had a search on Facebook and am shocked at the number of requests and responses, just seems totally shambolic and no vetting or background checks at all.
Naively I think I expected a coordinated register of DBS vetted persons in the UK being matched against genuine refugees but it seems like a free for all with people posting a picture of themselves saying they need somewhere to live and hundreds of people giving out their phone numbers, addresses etc saying to get in touch.
This is going to end badly, someone will take advantage of someone else, exploitation, abuse, people may end up dead. Don’t think that’s a scare scenario, it absolutely can and will happen. It’s just a matter of time.

I give it a month before we see posts complaining about having refugees in their home.

I think I know the site you mean. It may be well intentioned, but I thought there were enormous issues with it, from various angles. I would stick to the gov approved route.

[quote Cheekymaw]@decorbreadthegingerate
No I'm with you . I have twenty odd years working in safeguarding and I'm horrified about the slapdash, cheapo UK government. I worry about traumatised women and children being exposed to people with no knowledge of trauma and the potential for abuse.[/quote]
Yes. That's one reason I really would like to offer space, as at least I know it will be safe here, although the arrangements are really not optimal.

@MrsSkylerWhite

I think an awful lot of people really haven’t thought it through at all.

I agree. It's a serious, long term commitment. It's not just about offering a room is it but supporting them initially through trauma, then dealing with transport, work, shopping, education for children, negotiating the benefits system, finding long term accommodation. I know someone locally who is busy buying baby furniture for her spare room because she wants to host a Mum and Baby. That alone would raise a safeguarding flag for me.... Just being pragmatic.

Think OP is doing a big disservice by conflating those who genuinely want to help but might miss the mark a bit in how they show it, and those who are planning to exploit vulnerable people for nefarious purposes.

And I think there's a false choice here - the choice isn't between participating in this scheme or supporting some much better system like self-contained accommodation.

I think the Government have been dreadful on all of this. The foot dragging, the bureaucracy and the outsourcing of the need to support refugees is dreadful. But deciding not to participate in this scheme is not going to change any of that.

There are a great many reasons someone might not participate, relating to their own circumstances, or because they think the help they could provide would not be helpful or could be counterproductive. That's totally fine. But no reason to shit on people who have come to a different conclusion that maybe they could help.

We're not participating - we have a spare room but currently going through the adoption process, so it's just not possible. If we weren't, we would probably participate. But we's be realistic in terms of what's on offer - a small room in a home with two married guys. Of course that's not going to be the first choice of many, and we would certainly not be expecting gratitude or for someone to be sociable or immediately be our friend. But ultimately, I think it would be better for those in need of help to decide if whatever we could provide is helpful for them, rather than us deciding we know best.

@OneShotOneKill

I’ve just had a search on Facebook and am shocked at the number of requests and responses, just seems totally shambolic and no vetting or background checks at all. Naively I think I expected a coordinated register of DBS vetted persons in the UK being matched against genuine refugees but it seems like a free for all with people posting a picture of themselves saying they need somewhere to live and hundreds of people giving out their phone numbers, addresses etc saying to get in touch. This is going to end badly, someone will take advantage of someone else, exploitation, abuse, people may end up dead. Don’t think that’s a scare scenario, it absolutely can and will happen. It’s just a matter of time.

Well yes, of course. This is a war with associated refugee crisis. What did you think might happen?

I've seen a few posts in our local social media groups asking for "free" work from builders to install en-suites and do building works etc in their homes so that they can provide housing for refugees (and also claim the £350 a month!) - CF ery at its finest there 🤔