Safe Homes: Insights and lessons learnt from private hosting initiatives for people fleeing Ukraine

On 20 June, World Refugee Day, the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) issued three publications gathering tools, insights and lessons learnt from the EU funded Safe Homes programme. The Safe Homes Lessons Learnt report, Practitioner Handbook, and the Case Studies, further reflect on how to engage and activate the EU Member States, local and regional authorities, civil society, private hosts and all other stakeholders who are willing to help integrate people who are coming or are already in the EU. The aim of these publications is to encourage authorities and civil society to replicate initiatives such as Safe Homes in similar emergency situations.

• The Lessons learnt report presents challenges and good practices of hosting, drawn from first-hand experience of National Red Cross Societies and their partners in implementing the Safe Homes programme. The report outlines 15 key lessons for authorities involved in hosting.
• The Case studies highlight the experiences and insights gained from the initiatives implemented in Belgium, France, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Romania and Slovakia. Each case study offers insights into each country's legal, policy, and societal approach to welcoming people displaced from Ukraine. It identifies lessons learnt, best practices and key operational approaches that have been applied.
• The Handbook for practitioners offers a step-by-step manual on how to set up hosting schemes and how to safeguard and support hosts, volunteers and hosted people. It also focuses on the transition from temporary to more permanent hosting solutions.

All these publications provide practical tools to design and set up future similar private hosting initiatives. They could also be used to inform community sponsorship efforts considering their similarities with the hosting schemes set-up in the context of the Safe Homes initiative.

The Lessons Learnt report and the Practitioner Handbook highlight similarities between the two types of schemes. These similar aspects will also be present in the upcoming “Guidelines on the EU approach to community sponsorship” produced by the EU Asylum Agency and Commissions’ department for Migration and Home Affairs.

Background

The Safe Homes initiative was announced by Commissioner Johansson during the High-Level Forum on legal pathways to protection in 2022. In November 2022, the Commission set up an Emergency Assistance scheme with a budget of €5.5 million under the Asylum Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF) to support the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) in the implementation of the Safe Homes project in Belgium, France, Ireland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. Since its launch, around 5 700 families displaced from Ukraine received assistance to access education, trainings, healthcare, and support in finding their own accommodation.