This project is not yet up and running, but we wanted to share our plans and a timeline with you.

Background

More than 400 Ukrainian adults (and 200 children) have arrived in Leeds since March 2022. They are staying with hosts who have welcomed them into their homes through the UK Government’s Homes for Ukraine Sheme.

LASSN has been supporting people to work through the challenges of hosting refugees for more than 20 years and is a founder member of the No Accommodation Network.

In July 2022, Leeds City Council asked if LASSN would offer support to hosts of Ukrainian Households – and we proposed the following model of support. This project is currently resourced from October 2022 – September 2023.

What kind of help can hosts expect?

LASSN will employ a Development Worker to offer new and existing hosts the chance to meet one another, learn from one another, and find practical advice and assistance for the people they are supporting.

The worker will organise local groups, listen to the priorities and concerns of Hosts in each group, and help them to work out how they will address these things themselves, as a group, or with the help of others.

The worker will also offer to find support around specific issues based on the experiences of existing and former hosts. When we’ve run these groups before, hosts have asked for input around maintaining effective boundaries, conflict resolution and working with people who have experienced trauma. Hosts will decide what’s most important, and our role will be to respond to this.

In addition to learning/sharing skills like this, we also intend to invite people to attend these groups from Housing Advice, Children’s Services, the NHS and other local support providers to explain the kind of help they can offer. We want to link Hosts directly to the people and groups who are best placed to help them.

Please note: the worker will not offer one-to-one support to either Hosts or Guests. Instead, their role will be to help hosts (and their guests) to locate this support from groups and organisations across the city, and to ensure those places are aware of the very particular issues faced by Hosts and their Guests.

In addition, we are updating helpinleeds.com and newtoleeds.org to ensure up-to-date information is available to both hosts and their guests.

Timeline of events

  • July: Leeds City Council asks LASSN to develop a model of support for Hosts of Ukrainian refugees
  • August: LASSN begins recruitment for the Development Worker role and starts work on updating helpinleeds.com and newtoleeds.org.uk
  • September: Interviews take place for Development worker, and a resource page for Hosts is posted on the LASSN website
  • October: Development worker starts, and information is circulated to Hosts. Hosts who wish to meet up are asked to register their interest via the LASSN website
  • November: The first Hosting Network meetings take place

For more information, please contact [email protected] and we’ll do our best to help.