Author: Daniil

Given the experience of previous projects, especially those aimed at supporting families with children with special educational needs, a team of the CPH Confidence, as part of the UNICEF’s SPILNO All-Ukrainian programme, has developed a unique online programme to help children and adults from families affected by the war and families raising children with disabilities to return to a stable state as soon as possible.

Project participants had the opportunity to sign up for individual counselling, attend group classes, webinars, and master classes. And through lectures and practical sessions, they learned how to provide first aid to themselves and their children, find resources, understand how to respond to unusual behaviour in children (including children with SEN) in changed conditions.

As a result of hostilities, the need for psychological support in Ukraine has increased significantly. The war has led to significant trauma, including the loss of homes, family members, and a sense of security. The incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety and other emotional and behavioural problems has visibly  increased.

Group and individual psychological sessions using unique recovery and stabilisation techniques, elements of music, fairy tales, art, body-oriented therapy, and breathing exercises helped participants regain calm and confidence, find support in themselves, and feel how theoretical techniques work in practice.

The project, which ended in December 2023, conducted more than 350 group meetings, 20,000 individual consultations, 33 webinars, and 30 masterclasses. In total, more than 25,000 people took part in the project.

Ended

The goal of the project is to ensure every child’s right to grow up in a family environment by developing patronage in local communities, improving the quality and ensuring accessibility of such care for vulnerable families with children as an alternative to residential institutions.

Project target groups include patronage carers and their volunteer assistants, potential candidates for patronage carers, staff members of services for children, enterprises, institutions and organisations providing social services in communities, employment centres, social work specialists, adopting parents, foster parents, caregivers, guardians, representatives of public and religious organisations, media representatives, trainers for candidates for family-based care and foster carers.

The project beneficiaries are:

• children in difficult life circumstances
• children left without parental care
• children under patronage and children temporarily placed in families
• children in family-based care
• children with disabilities and children raised in families of persons with disabilities
• children from large families, families in difficult life circumstances, families affected by russian military aggression.

The main objectives are to increase the number of communities with operational patronage care services for children; ensure accessibility and improve the quality of patronage care by developing and piloting the service in 15 local communities; support vulnerable families with children and ensure that decisions are made in the best interests of the child.

Within the framework of the project, the CPH Confidence specialists carry out the following activities:

– training of psychologists from 22 regions and 150 communities who will support patronage families on the ground;

– conducting webinars for parents;

– providing psychoeducation of specialists in the human-human sphere who will be involved with patronage families;

– providing supervision to psychologists in local communities;

– providing counselling to patronage families, their biological children and children who come to them.

Within the project, the CPH Confidence offers psychological support for newly created patronage families; development of parental competences and the quality of psychological services for community psychologists working locally with patronage families, large families, families with children with special educational needs, families in difficult life circumstances; psychoeducation, intervention and supervision meetings.

Until April 2026.

The project is implemented by the CPH Confidence in cooperation with the Podil District Organisation of the Red Cross Society in Kyiv and NIVEA. Our specialists offer competent psychosocial support, help children and adolescents with visual impairments to socialise and integrate (age groups: children of 6-8 and 9-12 years, and adolescents and young people of 13-16 and 17-18 years). The classes are tailored to the psychological and physical characteristics of age groups.

Participants learn how to communicate non-verbally, understand and express their emotions and feelings in a protected space through music, art therapy, and receive resources and support from like-minded people. The project activities create a motivational climate and help improve the self-esteem, making participants more socially active and responsible.

Creating opportunities for visually impaired children and adolescents, their socialisation, integration, skill development, and social connections is an invaluable contribution to their stability and confidence in the future.

Until December 2024

The target audience includes internally displaced persons, both adults and children, and military wives waiting for their husbands.

The Sun in Your Palms provides women with the opportunity to meet and communicate with others in the same situation. This creates a community where women can share their experiences, mutually support each other and feel that they are not alone with their problems. It is always easier to wait together – through joint activities, conversations, and sharing, women feel each other’s inner strength and support. And the wait becomes less painful, and confidence that everything will be gets stronger.

The project seeks to create a safe, trusting space of support and empathy; promote mutual openness, tact and reflection; prevent social isolation and alienation; introduce participants to the Mooli Lahad concept of stress resistance and the Hobfoll’s Resource Conservation Theory; provide tools for emotional self-regulation, stabilisation and psycho-emotional recovery; teach distancing techniques and help restore a sense of coherence (clarity, controllability, meaningfulness).

Ended

Providing psychological help to children with special educational needs, their siblings and parents; support and counselling for families; educational activities to promote and implement a culture of relationships and communication, tolerant attitudes, skills and conflict resolution

The camp was held in Vorokhta (2019) and Kyiv (2021)

Social adaptation of families with children with special educational needs (SEN) is an urgent problem of today. Along with stablishing European social values and consolidating the priority value of a person, a citizen for the community, the nation as a whole, it is especially important to support Ukrainian citizens in difficult circumstances. This also applies to parents of children with SEN (including ASD) who need help from psychologists, as they usually direct their resources to the development of their children, trying to adapt them to social life and make them independent.

The project “One of Our Own” is primarily about psychological support and restoration of resources for parents raising children with SEN. Such children’s siblings also need more attention from their parents, because caring for children with SEN requires huge mental, physical and financial resources.

The group and individual psychological assistance provided by the CPH Confidence specialists to children with SEN has become a support for establishing interaction with other children and adults, developing self-care skills, which will help children adapt to society.

Art therapy methods and interaction with the natural environment motivated the campers to engage in cognitive activities and contributed to their overall development.

Hippotherapy, sensory integration of children with SEN and their siblings helped develop their physical abilities and cognitive processes. The group and individual work of psychologists with the siblings became a solid foundation on which to build communication, cooperation and mutual assistance skills.

Ended