Safeguarding: Homes for Ukraine
Information on statutory safeguarding duties, potential safeguarding issues, and working with safeguarding partners.
Statutory safeguarding duties
Whilst this guidance sets out specific requirements for this scheme, local councils should continue to follow existing statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children. This should be followed along with specific guidance on harms such as modern slavery, exploitation or domestic abuse.
You should also continue working with other safeguarding partners, including the police and health agencies, as they carry out their statutory safeguarding functions, and share information as necessary. This ensures there is a joint understanding of, and response to, any concerns arising.
They may also wish to engage other relevant agencies and services who are in contact with guest families.
Potential safeguarding issues
The vast majority of those applying to be Homes for Ukraine sponsor households will be doing so for altruistic reasons, wishing to help others find a place of safety after turbulent times. But nonetheless there are risks, as in other areas, that some will be applying to be a sponsor for the wrong reasons.
Everyone should be vigilant and take appropriate safeguarding action where needed. Some of those issues will be immediately apparent, such as an unsatisfactory Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) certificate or previous local concerns about the sponsor. Other will only emerge over time.
The sponsor household and guest household will each retain responsibility for their own family members. As the provider of the accommodation, the sponsor is in a relative position of power. There will also be potential harms from outside of the household that guest families, both adults and children, may be vulnerable to.
Local councils should particularly consider whether there are risks or instances of:
- exploitation and trafficking: modern slavery and human trafficking
- modern slavery: how to identify and support victims
- domestic abuse: council support for victims of domestic abuse
- child abuse: guide to identify signs of child abuse and neglect
- child sexual exploitation: core guidance from DfE (Department for Education)
- criminal exploitation: county lines guidance on children and vulnerable adults
Local councils should use existing guidance and frameworks as detailed above on these issues, along with any other matters that might become apparent. They should draw on existing safeguarding partnership arrangements to support this work and consider whether there are additional services that safeguarding partners should engage with to provide support.
Councils should work together with local police, anti-slavery partnerships, and modern slavery policy leads, to put preventative measures in place to reduce the risk of exploitation of people from Ukraine in their area.
You can find more information on modern slavery and human trafficking policing from the Modern Slavery and Organised Immigration Crime (MSOIC) Unit.
Where a council encounters a child that is not living with their parent or legal guardian but has not entered the UK via the eligible minors scheme, they should consult the Guidance for councils (children and minors applying without parents or legal guardians) on the process to follow.