LISTEN: States considers welcoming Ukrainian refugees to island
A scheme to welcome Ukrainian refugees into Guernsey homes is being considered, with a potential announcement imminent, the vice-president of Policy & Resources has announced.
Deputy Heidi Soulsby told the latest Guernsey Press Politics Podcast, out today, that work was under way – with various factors being considered – with the hope of announcing something by the end of this week.
‘Things have been rapidly changing,’ she said.
‘The UK had the family scheme and now they are talking about a supporting scheme. We are looking at that as we speak.’
Meetings had been held earlier this week with a number of committee presidents.
Another is due today and a ‘lot of work’ is being done by officers to see what could be done in Guernsey on the back of the UK’s announcement.
‘We’re also waiting for more details on what they mean because it has been a headline, but not necessarily the detail behind it. But we are actively looking at what that would mean for here,’ said Deputy Soulsby.
‘We have to think of things like children and education and how we can deal with that. What we do in terms of supporting people who want to take people in. Have we got the number of interpreters that we might need? What about safeguarding, access to health care? So, all that work is being done.’
She said that while Guernsey was keen to do as much as possible to help, it would not necessarily be the same as the UK scheme.
LISTEN TO DEPUTY HEIDI SOULSBY ON THIS WEEK'S GUERNSEY PRESS POLITICS PODCAST:
‘[It] will be suitable for Guernsey – bearing in mind we are a population of 62,000 on a small island compared with the UK which is over 1,000 times bigger.’
There are also options for Ukrainians to apply for visas to Guernsey, if they fit criteria. Deputy Soulsby said she was not aware that any applications had been made yet.
‘We have had a lot of interest in people wanting to support refugees coming in. But we are really asking people to hold off until we can announce something locally. Don’t register with the UK because that will cause a real issue for us – just wait until we can announce something, which we are hoping to do by the end of the week.’
That could potentially be a scheme that would allow people to welcome Ukrainian refugees into their houses. 'As a I say, a lot of work is required on that.
'It’s not just a simple case of saying: “Oh just come over, fine, we have got people over here”. There’s the infrastructure around it we’ve got to consider.
‘We don’t want people to come here and then find that they’re isolated, they don’t know where to go, what to do – and we’ve got to think about things like, people might take a family in but say it doesn’t work out – what do we do then?
‘So, it’s all those ifs and buts which some people might say is us just trying to avoid it.
'It’s not, it’s making sure we have got all the bases covered and we know what to do when something happens.’
With the UK government talking about providing financial support to people housing Ukrainian refugees, Deputy Soulsby was asked if that could happen locally.
‘Again that has to be seen within the context of all the other services that can be provided.
'We do have a different structure to the UK. It might be, I can’t say at the moment. But I can say that sort of consideration is going on,’ she said.
‘But we don’t just want to announce something and then have everybody getting very excited, and then we find we
are scrabbling around not being able to answer the questions.’
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