The project ensures better integration and participation of disadvantaged and vulnerable groups – orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) and PWDs - in economic and social life through the development of sustainable community- and family-based social services. The project incorporates two components: Supporting Orphans and Vulnerable Children and Expanding Participation of People with Disabilities.

Project beneficiaries include: orphans, vulnerable and socially disadvantaged children, children and adults with disabilities; parents and other family members; caregivers and specialists of the social protection institutions; activists of NGOs and other service organizations; and the general public.

One goal of the project is to reduce the number of children in Belarus being institutionalized in state-administered orphanages and boarding schools by supporting at-home family care and moving children out of institutions. The project targets orphans and social orphans (i.e., the children of living parents, those unable to provide proper care or those who have been denied parental rights, as well as their families). The activities focus on working with families and social service professionals in selected communities of Belarus to maintain children in families and to move children from institutions into less restrictive environments, primarily a return to natural family.

The OVC component:

• improves access to and further development of an integrated system of community-based prevention and rehabilitation services for families with institutionalized and at-risk children;
• improves the quality of training and education available to social service providers;
• provides technical assistance to social service providers through policy development, methodology consultations, and advocacy efforts.

All three objectives are tightly interconnected with training of service providers and policy development laying the groundwork and services practically applying the piloted approaches and delivering aid to individuals and families in need.

Over the last year, the expansion of USAID-funded child welfare services from 50 to 119 communities brought the number of vulnerable children who obtained access to new services to 1,061. The rate of institutionalization in project-assisted communities decreased from 4% in 2010 to 2.5% in 2011, compared to the countrywide rate of 23.9%.

Partnering with the national system of retraining educators, USAID support helped train 1,205 child welfare specialists on issues of deinstitutionalization and family-based care.

Another project goal is to increase integration of PWDs though developing innovative services and strengthening the capacity of grassroots disabled people’s organizations.

The PWD component focuses on capacity building, advocacy and inclusive education. The project’s objectives are:

• to consolidate PWDs’ grassroots organizations and initiatives as the major driving force of inclusion;
• to facilitate practical implementation of inclusion through targeted advocacy efforts aimed at policy makers, educators and social workers;
• to promote inclusive education as the most practical way of integrating PWDs society.

USAID activities aimed at inclusion of PWDs produced 32 new services for PWDs and helped launch 67 initiatives throughout the country.