Project “Social initiatives for families with children at the community level in Dnipropetrovsk region” Stage I (July 2023 - August 2024)

Since August 2023, the NGO "Institute for the Development of Social Services" (then the NGO "Dnipro League of Social Workers"), with the support of the United Nations Children's Fund UNICEF, has been implementing the project "Social Initiatives for Families with Children at the Community Level in the Dnipropetrovsk Region", aimed at responding to the complex challenges faced by communities in conditions of full-scale war, internal displacement of the population, and the growing needs of families with children for social support.

The initiative aimed to provide psychosocial support to families with children, provide methodological support to communities in the development of social services, and create a Hub for the Development of Social Services as a platform for training specialists. The project team consisted of 110 specialists.

The project started in 10 territorial communities with different levels of capacity, which allowed adapting approaches to different local contexts and combining crisis response with support for basic social functions of communities. During the implementation of the first phase, the project expanded to 15 communities, and the accumulated practical experience, monitoring results and feedback from communities showed the presence of systemic gaps in access to services for families raising children with disabilities, especially in rural and remote settlements.