London Charities get ready to welcome Ukrainian child refugees

As the charity sector in London prepared to welcome and support children from Ukraine, the UK Government’s slow pace of issuing visas meant that thousands of children were forced to wait weeks and months to enter the UK and receive support. Our research documents the preparedness of the charity sector in London to receive and support children from Ukraine and highlights the critical role our work plays in meeting the needs of refugee children and young people.

Our research surveyed 21 of our charity partners, currently supporting a total of 34,765 children, of which 2,127 are refugees. Of these, on average 18% of the children they support are refugees from 28 different countries. This reflects the current global socio-political climate, with just over half of all supported children originating from Afghanistan, with a high proportion of children from Eritrea, Syria, Ethiopia, Somalia, Iran and Iraq also finding sanctuary in London.