Prevention of social abandonement

The number of abandoned children is increasing every year. Ones of the main reasons are poverty and conflicts.

What should be done to prevent the orphanage and abandonment by the biological family? At what stage is it possible to prevent the family’s collapse? How to strengthen the family and implement the child’s right for family?

As an answer to these questions SOS Children’s Village opened a project of family strengthening “Prevention of Social Abandonment”. The project is aimed at support and strengthening the family that needs help- because nothing can be better for a child than warm family surrounding.

Project goal:

Organization of social-pedagogical help and providing the basic food and hygienic products for children in complicated life circumstances in order to prevent the material and social crisis in their families.

Strategy of the project:

• Address help to families at the risk group;
• Co-operation of project specialists with the family members in order to improve living conditions of their children;
• Co-operation with the local community in order to implement the rights of children.

Target group of the project:

• Families with low income
• Families where guardians care for children (focus on senior guardians)
• Families where lonely mothers bring up the children (focus on mothers under 25 years old)

Inability of the family to satisfy the basic children’s needs brings children under the threat of neglect and abandonment. We focus on families with low income and other risk factors that can cause social abandonment. Special attention is paid to which are families left without governmental or social support and bring their children up without the help of relatives, and to families with fatally ill parents or guardians.

How we help:

Project specialists investigate the family’s needs; provide social-pedagogical, psychological and material help. Every month all under aged children-participants of the project receive food and hygienic products that satisfy their basic monthly needs. Families-participants have also the opportunity to improve the psychological atmosphere within their families:

Children are participating in the developing and educational trainings and, together with their parents, receive consultations of the specialists-pedagogues, psychologists, doctors, ect.

With our help families can improve their relationships, psychological and material conditions and get additional education or trainings. It is the success for us if the family within the project overcomes the crisis, gets necessary life skills, uses them and does not need any material help anymore.

We expect that all participants of the project receive a concrete help, improve communication skills, acquire healthy life skills, accept the model of safe behaviour, and receive the information about the rights of a child and the child’s possibility of participation in decision-making process.

Project is realized in partnership with the Centre of social services for families, children, and youth of Podol district in Kyiv City State Administration and Brovary Town Centre of social services for families, children, and youth of Brovary Town Council.

Today beneficiaries of the project are 400 children: 250 - in Kyiv city and 150 – in Brovary city.

Project implementation is impossible without the material help of people and organizations that care for children. Thanks to Tetra Pak company 400 children-participants of the project receive 1230 litters of health-giving and safe milk every month.

The project “Prevention of Social Abandonment” endeavours to build a net of organizations that will join their efforts and operation and act in the children’s interests through protecting their rights and providing a concrete help. Today the project has true friends that support children by providing toys, shoes and clothes – they are Kyiv Union of Samaritans in Ukraine and Adventist agency of help and development in Ukraine “ADRA”.