According to government data, the Homes for Ukraine scheme – for Ukrainians without family resident in the UK to sponsor them – had seen 354 arrivals in the borough of Tunbridge Wells as of June 19.
Among them was Svitlana, a 43-year-old from Vinnytsia, who has just accepted a job offer for September as a teaching assistant in a local primary school, after applying through the Kent Teach portal.
“I will be with a Year One class in September. There is one boy from Ukraine in the class and there are other children in different classes. I gather I will be able to help them, too,” she said.
Although Vinnytsia made the headlines in mid-July for a terrible rocket attack, Svitlana said that the town had been targeted before.
“At the start of the war, there was constant firing by rockets. I was so afraid. We were in a basement, and when I saw my child was really suffering – she was fearful and crying – I took the decision to get her out.
“I didn’t want to wait any longer. We lived near locations which could be a target,” she added.
Thanks to volunteers using Facebook to put Ukrainians in touch with UK sponsors, Svitlana and her eight-year-old daughter managed to get a visa and travelled via Poland to Dover. She still has relatives in Vinnytsia.
“We are so grateful that we have the possibility to be safe”
“It took us a week to get here from Ukraine. I was always afraid the road would come under fire.”
Until her job starts in September, Svitlana plans to volunteer on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the publicly-funded children’s summer camps to Ukrainian children, alongside local teachers.
“It’s so good that there are all these activities, and I am so happy to volunteer,” she said.
“We are so grateful that we have the possibility to be safe, and that my daughter now plays, that she is cheerful and feels safe. She is still afraid of loud noises – helicopters and sirens – but she is completely different now.
“Please say that we are so grateful for saving our lives and saving our children and letting us live in peace. The people and the Council and the Government made it possible (for us) to work, for our children to go to school and for us to have medical care.
“For us to feel like normal people and not to be afraid every day. And for the possibility to start over – I’m not 20!”
Also fresh from Ukraine is Tetiana Solntseva (pictured above). She arrived in Crowborough from Kyiv a month ago with her two children and went through coaching with the Job Clubs [Times, June 22] before attending the Ukrainian Job Fair at Royal Victoria Place in late June.
“I went to training, prepared my CV, and went to meet local employers,” she explained.
Thanks to her background in teacher training and even work towards a PhD, she gravitated toward the agency Term Time Teachers, which performs DBS security checks and obtains references to place people in nurseries, primary schools and secondary schools.
“My children are 14 and 11 and I have been a teaching assistant for the past six years,” Tetiana said.
Now she has just had her first placement through the agency, at Broadwater Down Primary School, where her brief was to help Ukrainian schoolchildren ‘so they adapt’, she explained.
This placement was a temporary one, until the end of term, but work may resume in September, she added.
“Then my children will be in the same school,” she said, explaining that she was not sure how to work through the summer when her children were on holiday.
“In time, the situation will become clearer.”
However, she said she already liked what she knew about the educational system here in the UK.
“I like the system, and how it is good for curiosity. And the teaching of mathematics is good. My son likes mathematics best.”
