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The list of social services for families to be expanded in Mariupol

28 January 2020, 09:29
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Society, Education

Mariupol continues to develop the direction of social services for families. Today Mariupol City Council has signed a Memorandum of Cooperation with UNICEF under the project ‘Together. Social services for families in the community’. The aim is to organize a more effective system of social services in communities in the East of Ukraine.

According to Deputy Mayor Alexander Kochurin, this project will help identify key points of development in the social field.

‘It is possible to develop and regularly increase the number of services, but without receiving feedback, it is impossible to evaluate the real results. This project will help us to actualize the needs of the residents and create conditions for the development of the most important directions for them’, Alexander Kochurin said.

In her turn, Deputy Mayor Kseniya Sukhova emphasized: ‘It is important for us to comprehensively inform the population about all available social services. We would like to help our community to create a complex of integrated social services, where one specialist will be competent both in the social sphere and in the field of education and health care. The important thing is the availability of effective tools and capabilities to respond to the problem and find comprehensive solutions to it from the beginning’.

The main focus will be on socially vulnerable groups: large families and low-income families, families of displaced persons and raising children with disabilities.

UNICEF project curator Natalia Datchenko emphasized: ‘Our goal is to provide an individual approach to each family, who is in difficult circumstances. To create a complex of conditions for psychological help to such families’.

Participation in the project will help the city explore the community's need for some social services. There will be a number of training sessions for specialists of the Department of Social Welfare. The program also provides for the introduction of a mechanism to improve interaction between agencies and the budgeting for social services. UNICEF is also considering creating a social center that will be tailored to meet the needs of the community.

Twelve communities of Donetsk and Lugansk regions are participating in the project.About 100,000 inhabitants will receive new social services in the course of the project. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the Ukrainian Network for the Rights of the Child and NGO Mariupol Youth Union will assist in the implementation of the project. Funds for the improvement of social services in eastern Ukraine were allocated by the German Government through the German Development Bank (KfW).