In the Kharkiv region, there are 4,230 orphans and children deprived of parental care, including 123 children Measures are being taken to place these children in family forms of upbringing. To help these children find loving families, the project «Strengthening Alternative Care through Support for Better Care Reform in the Kharkiv Region» is being launched in the Kharkiv region.
The goal of the project is to help children find families and develop a system of better care and upbringing for them. The project of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is implemented by the charitable foundation "Volunteers: Adults for Children" together with the Children's Service of the Kharkiv Regional Social Services Center and the Kharkiv Regional Center for Social Services.
“Kharkiv region is the first of the deoccupied regions to implement a program to ensure better care for children. With the support of the Office of the First Lady, which is responsible for this issue, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and the Coordination Center for the Development of Family Education and Child Care, we are doing everything to ensure that every child grows up not in an institutional care facility, but in a family, where they can be given enough attention and love.
"We hope that this project will help children, their guardians, and communities to provide every child with protection, care, and most importantly, a family," said Vita Kovalska, Deputy Head of the Kharkiv OVA.
The project will operate in 12 communities of the region: Balakliysk, Bogodukhivsk, Valkivsk, Zmiivsk, Izyumsk, Kehychivsk, Krasnokutsk, Lozovsk, Pervomaysk, Pisochynsk, Shevchenkivsk, and Chuhuyivsk.
Communities will receive multi-level support within the project:
For professionals who work with children (educators, doctors, police officers, social workers and other specialists):
- Organization of training to improve their professional competence;
- Providing consulting support for better work with children.
For families who want to adopt children:
- Providing information support on various forms of family education;
- Organization of events to popularize family forms of upbringing;
- Social, psychological and legal support from specialists of the Charity Fund "Volunteers: Adults for Children".
- Organization of certified training under the program for the training of foster parents, guardians, foster parents, adoptive parents, and foster carers in communities
- Organization and improvement of life for families who have taken children into foster care.
Also, within the framework of the project, a mechanism for interaction between all structures involved in the implementation of the reform of better care for children and family support in the Kharkiv region will be developed to improve the procedure for cooperation between different sectors and sections.
The project will last until the end of December 2025.