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Those hosting Ukrainian refugees are not virtue-signalling do-gooders

Host families are ordinary people with lives of their own. They need our help.

A report in this newspaper that some Irish families have found themselves “unable to cope” with hosting Ukrainian refugees and have already “returned them” to State accommodation centres such as the one in Citywest, have lead to the predictable range of reactions – sniggering, eye-rolls, performative outrage about the “virtue-signalling do-gooders” who didn’t know what they were getting themselves into.

Of course they didn’t know what they were getting themselves into. How could they? There is no template for opening your home to strangers from another part of the world who have had their lives violently ripped out from under them. This isn’t a cultural exchange programme. It’s not couch surfing.

For the whole business to be sustainable it has to be about supporting the hosts as well as the Ukrainians

But rather than pillory the host families who couldn’t cope – and who sensibly made the tough decision to admit this while alternative accommodation options are still available – we should take it as a warning sign of what will happen on a much greater scale if host families don’t get proper support.

More than 24,000 families have volunteered through the Irish Red Cross to host families from Ukraine – although it now appears that up to 3,000 of the roughly 4,000 offers of vacant properties have fallen through. Of the more than 20,000 Ukrainians who have already arrived here, 11,800 needed accommodation. Some are staying in hotels paid for by the Government, while others are making arrangements privately through groups of volunteers, as the Red Cross works its way through applications.

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These so-called “virtue-signalling do-gooders” are not at home polishing their halos while they wait: instead, they’re clearing out spare bedrooms and corralling microwaves, borrowing secondhand school uniforms and bedlinen, downloading translation apps and telling themselves and one another it will be grand. And for many, it will be grand. But none can have any real idea what they’re getting into.

"There is no professional anywhere who would be fully able to cope" with the level of trauma coming to Ireland, says Dr Aideen Gough, one of the volunteers behind Helping Irish Hosts, an organisation set up as an emergency response in the immediate aftermath of the conflict, which has already placed 250 Ukrainian families with Irish ones. Only one of those arrangements broke down after the Ukrainian person asked to return to a hotel, and she later requested to be placed with a family again.

Her group of volunteers has been putting together resources and advice for hosts on its website. But much more help is needed from Government. “It’s not simply pulling people out of Ukraine and plopping them into Irish homes. For the whole business to be sustainable it has to be about supporting the hosts as well as the Ukrainians.”

Louth Independent TD Peter Fitzpatrick told the Dáil this week that people who have taken in Ukrainian families feel abandoned as their household bills soar, with no help from the State. The Irish Refugee Council says host families should be entitled to €300-€400 a month. With the other accommodation options for refugees ranging from €100-a-night hotel rooms at one end of the scale to warehouses and even tents at the other, this seems like a bargain.

But the financial strain is just one aspect of the challenge for host families. The trauma being suffered by Ukrainian refugees is not in the past; it is a trauma they’re living every day, sitting at some family’s kitchen table or on their sofa. The Health Service Executive has begun offering online workshops to help prepare hosts, but much more training and support needs to be made available.

There are also considerable demands on the host’s time and resources. They may need to help the Ukrainian family navigate the banking system or get a medical card. Gough characterises the experience as less about “hosting” than “an extreme co-living arrangement. There is an emotional investment”. For her, it has been “fantastic. We are blessed” with the family staying in her home. “These are people who will be in our lives for a long time.” But it doesn’t always go entirely smoothly.

Another person who has been hosting for a month – and agreed to speak anonymously on the basis that they could be more open – describes occasional cultural and political divides.

“What they might feel about Covid”, or conservative views they might express about “people of colour or LGBT people may make you uncomfortable. If you’re just staying in my spare room and I feel like you’ve got different politics to me, that’s okay. But where you have this intricate relationship where you’re helping this person out, it can be more tricky”.

Families hosting Ukrainian refugees are not trauma counsellors. They’re not virtue-signalling do-gooders. They’re ordinary people with jobs and families and lives of their own. And they need more than a gold star for compassion.

As a society, we have committed to take in as many Ukrainian refugees as need our help. If the word society means anything at all, we all have to pitch in. The lasagne on the doorstep is great, says the host I spoke to, but offer something practical and specific – say you’ll show the Ukrainian family how to navigate the bus network, or offer help with finding a school. And don’t just do it once and then forget about them.

These are early days yet, says Gough. “We’re at a crossroads for which way our country is going to go in how it deals with this. This could be an awful story about how we were completely unprepared and people were shoved everywhere and it turned into a continuation of direct provision. Or it could be that we discover this is a struggle, it is difficult, but it’s hugely rewarding as well.”

If it’s going to have any chance of not turning into another direct provision, the families hosting Ukrainian refugees need more than a “thanks a mill, good luck, see you soon” from the Government and the rest of society.