When Russia invaded Ukraine on 24th February 2022 a mass forced migration began (Unicef, 2022). Many teachers across Europe found themselves welcoming children seeking sanctuary to their classrooms with over two million children from Ukraine at the start of the war travelling to other countries in search of safety (Kruszewska and Lavrenova, 2022). By December 2022, 3.9 million children had left Ukraine to seek refuge in other countries (Unicef, 2022). By September 2022, 22,100 applications for school places in the United Kingdom had been made for children from Ukraine (DfE, 2022). Schools have been welcoming and including children and trying to learn the best way to support the newest members of their school communities. This research explores what supports and what hinders the formation of effective parent-school relationships for the inclusion of refugee students and their families (Block et al., 2014). Through a series of semi-structured interviews with Ukrainian parents, we examine effective school-parent relationships for the inclusion of refugee families and children in education. Drawing on the voices of Ukrainian parents, we argue that recognising communication and relationships between schools and displaced parents turns on the formation of ongoing and inclusive dialogues. This, we contend, involves enacting shift from ‘monolingual cultures’ within schools (Sime, 2018), which compound isolation and exclusion, to multilingual cultures, which allows all students, parents, and members of staff to give voice to their differences. Indeed, we argue to the conclusion that what is needed between these parents and school staff is inclusive and attentive listening. Such listening, we will suggest, involves a willingness, not simply to hear others too often denigrated as deficit, but to also to listen to them with responsibility, that is, to prioritise the ability to respond to the other person before the ability to name, to classify, and to label them.

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