The project offers short-term fostering for children temporary left without care. 136 children have already benefited from this service. They were provided with loving family environment, care and rehabilitation and, most importantly, avoided Soviet-type residential institutions. Thanks to your support we could make this possible. Together we are not only changing separate lives. We are changing the very system of alternative care in Ukraine, pushing it to meet best interests of a child.
Due to poverty, child abuse or parental substance misuse children are getting temporarily removed from their families. There is no comprehensive understanding of short-term fostering in Ukraine. Usually, when social services identify a challenge to child's well-being, he/she is placed in an institution, which is an unwishful and damaging measure. At the same time, the biological families crises remain unresolved and 9 out of 10 children stay in residential care much longer than intended.
The Services we introduce include 4 interrelated activities: 1)immediate care for a child by emergency fosterers; 2)support services for biological families (to solve crises causing child removal); 3)work on improvement of parental capacity; 4)training of social sphere specialists working with children and emergency foster carers. Our current goal is to provide quality training and support for emergency fostering families making these Services accessible to children in all communities Ukraine.
This project is a pioneering opportunity to ensure that vulnerable children remain in family care at all times and avoid traumas of institualisation. It gives biological parents an opportunity to strengthen their capacity to raise and develop their children in the future. Our vision is for this model to become a national-level network of emergency foster carers and replace the old outdated approaches to temporary alternative care.
