Strirling Council taking steps to keep Ukrainian refugees fleeing war safe from trafficking

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Tackling the increased risk of trafficking and exploitation are key issues in their work to support Ukrainian refugees, say Stirling Council officials.As plans to bolster the council’s support to people fleeing the war were due to go before a special meeting of the authority, officers also outlined risks taken into consideration.A report due before the meeting said: “Safeguarding is a key risk.

There are established trafficking routes out of Ukraine and war is an inevitable, additional driver of trafficking.Click here for more news and sport from the Stirling area.“The fact that most arrivals will be women and children, the lack of any national safeguarding guidance so far, the invitation to businesses to sponsor people, and the scale of the schemes all greatly increase the risk of trafficking, sexual exploitation, financial exploitation and modern day slavery.

We are following all UK and Scottish Government guidance to mitigate this risk.”They added: “On a practical level, the operational team is concerned about the risk that relationships between sponsors and Ukrainian guests may break down, or be assessed as inappropriate, potentially resulting in homeless applications to the council.“This could place additional demand on the council’s own housing stock and on its capacity to identify additional properties from the third and/or private sector.“There is also a challenge in managing expectations within communities, including sponsoring families in relation to what happens at the end of the initial six month sponsoring period.”There were said to be 39 sponsors locally and 85 guests so far - 18 of whom had arrived in Stirling.