USAID Families for Children Project Transfers Successful Child Welfare Models and Practices to Government of Ukraine

United States Ambassador in Ukraine, William B.  Taylor joined Minister of Ukraine for Family, Youth and Sports Yury Pavlenko in opening the Center for Innovative Technologies at the State Institute of Family and Youth.   Developed collaboratively by USAID’s Families for Children Program and the Ministry of Family, Youth and Sports, the Center for Innovative Technologies will serve as a training and information resource to disseminate successful and innovative child-welfare and social work practices.  To institutionalize professional development opportunities for child welfare service providers throughout Ukraine, the Center will also provide ongoing support to the training and certification of regional and national trainers. A comprehensive set of training curricula and training modules developed through the Families for Children Program will be transferred to the Center.  This includes curricula on parental skills development (Make Parenting a Pleasure), curricula to train prospective adoptive parents (Parents in Process), and foster parents caring for HIV-positive children (Care and Support to HIV-positive Children), and curricula to strengthen approaches to promoting family preservation and community mobilization. Along with the Center for Innovative Technologies, USAID’s Families for Children Program will support the establishment of Regional Training Centers in Cherkasy, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kyiv and Odesa oblasts.   USAID/Ukraine’s Families for Children Project, implemented by Holt International Children’s Services in Cherkasy, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kyiv and Odesa oblasts, aims to develop family-based care models as alternatives to institutionalization and build a continuum of integrated services to strengthen and support adoptive and foster families.  The program provides services in three areas: family preservation, domestic adoption and foster care/family type homes.  Support to children and families affected by HIV/AIDS is an integral component of the Families for Children Program. Since implementation began in 2004, the Families for Children Program has supported development of a series of guidelines on child welfare and national regulations on guardianship and kinship care that are in line with international best practices; strengthened the professional capacity of social welfare service providers to deliver quality child welfare and child protective services through the training of over 10,000 child welfare professionals and the development of a cadre of over 100 national and regional trainers on foster care;, expanded the availability of social services and introduced new services through the provision of over 110 grant projects that have provided psycho-social support services to over 1,700 children and 1,100 families; and raised public awareness of and community involvement in addressing child welfare issues through more than 16,000 media appearances. United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) assistance focuses on the following areas: Economic Growth, Democracy and Governance, Health and Social Sector.  Since 1992, USAID has provided $1.6 billion worth of technical and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine to further the processes of democratic development, economic restructuring and social sector reform in the region.  For additional information about this and other USAID programs in Ukraine, please call USAID's Development Outreach and Communication Office, at tel.  (044) 492-7101 or visit the USAID website at: http://ukraine.usaid.gov.