Homes for Ukraine Evaluation

Evaluation and the future of matching – by Meredith Kelly, Supporting Welcome Lead

A year and a half has passed since Reset launched our Homes for Ukraine matching service with the goal of safely matching Ukrainian refugees with sponsors here in the UK. To date, the government has issued over 160,000 sponsorship scheme visas to Ukrainians seeking refuge in the UK with Reset matching 1,248 hosts with refugee families and groups.
Since our service launched in April 2022, a lot has changed, and our matching service has had to adapt. We’ve moved from an emergency response with 1000 hosts signing up a week to a steadier and much lower dozen hosts per month. From the outset, we put in place four principles to guide our matching service to give agency to refugees, prepare hosts, match safely and encourage hosts to connect with their community for support.

Evaluating our service

Earlier this year, to mark the anniversary of the launch of our matching service, we commissioned an evaluation to understand how well we followed our principles, how we can improve our current support for host and refugees, and what we can learn for future responses.

We commissioned an evaluation that sought to consider three points:

1. Did the Homes for Ukraine matching service demonstrate its principles?
2. What makes an effective matching service (for hosts, guests and Reset) and to what extent has Reset provided this?
3. How well positioned is Reset’s matching service to support future refugee responses?

Our evaluators conducted key interviews with a sample of hosts and guests who were matched through Reset as well as interviews with staff at partner organisations, and a survey which was sent to a large sample of matched hosts and refugees.

How did we do?

The findings were overwhelmingly positive, showing that our matching service meets the four principles we set out to follow: refugee choice, safety, host preparedness and encouraging community connection, in a considered manner. It also found that the service was effective in meeting some or all host and refugee matching needs and around half hosts and guests saying that ‘nothing was lacking’ in the service.

However, one aspect that was found to be lacking from hosts and refugees alike, was the absence of ongoing support from Reset post-matching, with Reset ending formal support once a match was made. We recognise that this is a gap in our service and have listened to this feedback. We are now doing more post-arrival support work and are offering one-to-one support calls as well as regular check in emails to hosts and refugees matched through Reset.