Post-Soviet Ukraine is a very young and developing country where many crucial reforms are still to be made. One of the current problems in the fairly new Child Welfare System is the problem of child sexual abuse. Under the Soviet Child Welfare System, sexual abuse of children was an unspoken topic and even today many child welfare workers in Ukraine feel uncomfortable talking about this topic. But the problem exists and it is becoming urgent. Many adoptive and foster families who have adopted children in the last five years have been reporting cases where adoptive and foster parents found out that their adoptive and foster children were sexually abused either in the orphanage or by their biological parents or relatives.
Today we have a serious problem in Ukraine where child welfare workers have no knowledge or training on how to deal with this issue. Very often child welfare workers do not know how to do the investigation procedures on sexual abuse, how to interview the child who was abused , how to define evidences of abuse and finally how to help abused children to recover from such trauma.
Our goal in this project is to build skills in adoptive and foster families and social workers so that could effectively help children who experienced sexual abuse.
In order to reach this goal we want to develop a pool of national trainers who would be trained, equipped and ready to carry out this training program throughout Ukraine. National trainers will work with foster and adoptive families, child psychologist, social workers, churches and NGOs providing them with comprehensive materials to address this need.
We want to raise 8000 dollars in order to launch this project. If you have a desire to take part in it you can donate right now on our blog.
Everyone can make a difference no matter whether it is big or small
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