Psychological and Educational Support for Children in Ukraine

Summary

In 2023, Save Ukraine committed to aid in the physiological and emotional support of children and students during the war in Ukraine and in post-conflict peacebuilding. Over the next year, Save Ukraine will launch 200 support centers across Ukraine, expanding to villages and districts of de-occupied territories, plus additional regions in Western Ukraine. The Support Centers will help children cope with trauma and adapt educational skills to live and learn during the ongoing war. Save Ukraine will also train and support teachers and social workers, while helping to better coordinate efforts of organizations supporting children’s education continuity during the war. This approach will impact 400,000 children and combine psychological, educational, and social supports to provide the future generation of Ukraine with the opportunity to live a more resilient future.

Approach

Goal:

Children and students are psychologically healthy and socially adapted for education and life skills during the war

Detailed description:

Creation of support centers for children and students at educational institutions of various types: concluding agreements, arranging rooms for individual work with children. Term 2 months.

Organizing and conducting training programs for teachers, social workers, and psychologists on the topics: “Security challenges,” “Work with trauma,” “Life skills,” “Sensitivity to diversity.” Term: 3 months.

Direct support for children and students: individual and group work. Term: 10 months.

Creation and support of a social network of performers and co-executors of the project for better coordination and dissemination and exchange of experience. Term:12 months.

Training and coordination with public organizations, local authorities, residents of rural communities for psychological and social support of children and students. Term 5 months.

Organizing and conducting advocacy activities to improve legislation on psychological, social and educational support for children. Term:5 months.

Partners and joint activities with them are specified in paragraph B.

Resources for implementation: arrangement of centers, transport support, organization and conduct of training events, advocacy campaigns.

Key metrics:

Number of children and students who receive psychological, social, educational support;

Number of established centers to support children and students;

Number of group and individual classes for children and students advocacy campaigns, at community and national level;

Number of educators, psychologists, social workers who have received knowledge and work with children;

Number of public organizations that help, cooperate with teachers and psychologists to support children;

Number of local governments that help children in education, social adaptation.

Number of documents of different levels created to protect the rights of children.

Action Plan

Our organization had a project with USAID to create and support social centers. This experience will be relevant in creating a new project of 200 enters.

Submitted project:

1. Expands geography. Villages and districts of de-occupied territories are added: Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv regions.

Added regions of Western Ukraine: Khmelnitsky, Zakarpattia, Ternopil, Chernivtsi, Volyn regions.

2. The circle of partners involved in the implementation of the project is expanding. State educational institutions (schools) are invited to become partners.

Background

In Ukraine, the educational and psychological support of a child and its parents were first destroyed. Before the war, these services began to be restored, but specialists and methods were lost.

Social centers for support of vulnerable people, mobile teams to help people affected by violence and psychological support, in many places do not work with educational institutions and are not represented in different cities and villages.

In small towns and villages there are not enough human and material resources to support educational institutions with psychological and social support.

There are no methods of combining psychological, educational, and social support for children and students at the national and regional levels. There are separate piloting sites.

There is no dialogue between different platforms for supporting children for cooperation, coordination, monitoring and assessment of the state of children and the impact of war on them.

There are numerous barriers for effective children’s education during and after the war:

Trauma (mental health) is the main barrier for children’s success and will be a focus of most efforts;• Many qualified and experienced teachers left the country and in order to attract their return – we have created modern, innovative models, such as Community Centers;

Many schools are physically destroyed;

Displacement has significantly and negatively impacted children and their motivation and ability for education;

Many children have been displaced and lost any sense of permanence, and, even suffering clinical depression;

Exacerbating the educational challenges caused by 2 years of COVID, the gap for many children continues to increase for the already 1.5 years of the war, resulting in 3.5 years delay for many of the educational opportunities.

Progress Update

Partnership Opportunities

The project requires financial resources for:

Creation and launch of 200 centers in all regions of Ukraine.

Media support to cover the work of the organization in this direction.

Partners to support the implementation of the project.,Save Ukraine is a children and families rescue network, established in 2014 as a response to russian military aggression. Save Ukraine uses a comprehensive 3-stage approach to mend the damage and the trauma caused by war.

Stage 1: Rescue. It includes projects centered around evacuation and rescue missions; the goal of the Rescue stage is to remove as many children and families as possible from immediate danger into safety.

Stage 2: Restore. This stage targets trauma recovery among children and families evacuated during the Rescue stage. Most work is carried out at Hope and Healing Centers.

Stage 3: Rebuild. During this stage, Save Ukraine actively helps children and families adapt to their new lives in safety. Projects of the Rebuild stage tackle the issues of longer-term housing, social adaptation, and education for children and families.

The key beneficiaries of Save Ukraine activities are vulnerable children and families, including orphans, children with disabilities, large families, and low-income families. In addition, Save Ukraine supports abandoned elderly people and survivors of sexual abuse.