A joint project called Helping Street Kids and Unprotected Groups to be implemented by Germany’s International Union and the All-Ukrainian League of Social Workers NGO was presented on February 19. Ukraine is the first CIS country with which the Germans began cooperation, due to the gravity of the problem for our country.
The project, to be paid mainly with EU money (EUR 219,500) and to take a year and a half, is aimed at making it possible for children and teenagers to make their own decisions about their future life, improving access to job markets, and monitoring their school attendance. The project provides for creating an infrastructure for homeless children and training personnel involved in the project. The latter is now a priority, project manager and representative of the International Union Katherine Akstman says, and the bulk of spending will go to organize workshops for social workers who will represent the league, with each of them multiplying his training for colleagues within 18 months at six workshops. The second stage is the creation of consulting centers for homeless children where they can get psychological help. However, we could not receive any reasonable arguments as to how the children will learn about such centers and whether they will be prepared to be open with representatives of the enemy camp (this is how adults are perceived by street kids). We also drew a blank trying to learn how children will be able to use the hot line soon to be established in the regions.
Based on the German experience, where homeless children primarily need psychological help, this idea was almost entirely transplanted to Ukraine, without taking into account that prevention of children vagrancy is much more effective in the West. For example, a social worker in the West is to a high risk family to render various help ranging from household chores to psychiatric counseling. In addition, there are various kinds of shelters where street children live under the supervision of social workers.
According to the project, social workers will first start visiting the gathering places of street kids and try to make a strong case for the benefits of living in a community, something that will hopefully make children come to the consulting centers. That the project stands a good chance of success has been indicated by a poll, in which 75% of the children said they want to return to community life. Still, the participants of the project do not believe the problem will be solved quickly. “Even if we reach out to 10% of the street kids, that would be good,” they say.
