FIRST VOLUME OF THE FIELD GUIDE TO CHILD WELFARE HAS BEEN REPRINTED NOW!

Finally we have got to the finish line. Our publisher has reprinted first volume of the Field Guide (1500 copies) and we expect it to be delivered next week in our office.
We are very excited and look forward to reprint other three Volumes within next few month.

ADOPTION SUMMIT!

In November of 2010, ILDC participated at the conference "Ukraine without orphans" that was held by ILDC partner Alliance Ukraine Without Orphans in Kiev.  Since then a lot of efforts and work has been done in the area of promotion of national adoption among communities, churches and organizations that work in Ukraine. Last Friday on April 29^th another remarkable event took place in Kiev.  ILDC  had a great opportunity to partner with Alliance Ukraine Without Orphans in organizing Adoption Summit.  60 people from all

over Ukraine arrived to Kiev to participate in the summit.  The purpose of this event was to unite the efforts in our work with orphan children in Ukraine through promoting idea of national adoption. As well, ILDC was able to bring to the summit  3 new volunteers who will work in churches in south of Ukraine promoting national adoption and will be motivating churches to join our vision “Ukraine Without Orphans” . 

NEW RESOURCE, NEW OPPORTUNITY!

Good News for Foster and Adoptive Families and for Child Welfare Workers in Ukraine!

We have found a sponsor who have agreed to fund translation and publishing of “Wounded Children, Healing Homes” written by the wonderful author of many books in the area of adoption and foster care - Jayne Schooler.

At this time we look for the translator, who will translate this book into Russian and for a good publisher.

We plan to publish 1000 copies of this book and conduct workshop with the author in Ukraine. Each participant will have an opportunity to receive a free copy of the book at the end of the workshop. We also want to make this book available for free for all foster and adoptive families that we work with.

Again, we would like to thank everyone for your prayers! We believe it is the answer to our prayers as we have been waiting for this opportunity for the past 2 years.

We believe that this new resource will be great help to many foster and adoptive families In Ukraine and other Russian speaking countries. This book will help these families  to understand their children and  to build a healing environment for children’s healthy development and functioning within the families.  

WE WANT TO THANK JAYNE SCHOOLER FOR WRITING THIS BOOK AND FOR ALLOWING US TO HAVE IT AS ONE OF THE ILDC RESOURCES! NOW WE CAN OFFER IT TO SO MANY FAMILIES IN UKRAINE, KYRGYZSTAN AND OTHER RUSSIAN SPEAKING COUNTRIES!

VISITNG USA IN MAY!

Oleg Shelashsky, executive Director of ILDC and Maxim Slivka, director of marketing and development will be flying to the US on May 6th.They will spend 4 weeks in the US, meeting with potential partners, speak at the different churches and meet with small groups of people presenting the work of ILDC. As well, they will participate in Summit VII of Christian Alliance for Orphan in Louisville, KY. It is going to be a very busy schedule and lots of traveling during their trip.
If you have a desire to meet with Oleg or Max during their travel you can email them at oleg@ildcua.org and max@ildcua.org
Also, you can reach them on their cell phone: +16143726747
On behalf of ILDC staff we would like to ask you to include Oleg and Max in your prayers. Thank you!


Visiting in the US:
May 6-8 – Chicago
May 10 – Columbus
May 11-13 – Louisville
May 14-16 – Knoxville
May 17 – Ashville, NC
May 18-19 – Nashville
May 20-22 – Birmingham
May 24-25 – Columbus
May 26-27 – Cleveland
May 28-29 – Chicago
May 30-31 – Wisconsin
May 31-June 5 – Madison, Wisconsin

LEADERSHIP TRAINING LAUNCHED!

"Leadership and Management in Child Welfare" training program for managers and supervisors in the field of Child Welfare was launched last week by ILDC!

For the first time ILDC will conduct complete series of this training program.  In the past we conducted some part of it but never had an opportunity to do all 5 modules for one group. 

Through this program we seek to develop leaders,

managers and supervisors of different child welfare agencies and organizations both government and non government. Our goal in this program is to help participants of this training to become more effective and successful in their work with children within their own organization.

We had a group of 11 people who we found to be very talented and driven with desire to learn how to be effective in their unique roles as directors and supervisors.

Next module of this training will be held in Kiev in April 25^th– 26^th.

MOMENT OF CELEBRATION!

National trainers were certified to train Case Worker Core in Ukraine!

This was an event that we were looking forward to!

ILDC in collaboration with Partnership for Every Child and IHS have trained over 30 national trainers in Ukraine. It took over two years to complete this training project. Now these trainers are certified and ready to go out and train others. This is where change begins, new generations of trained and equipped professionals will continue to carry out world’s best practice into the hands of others and they would do the same. Most of these trainers have already started to train in different regions of Ukraine and we already could see some results. Social workers, after going through the training, change their thinking about their work with children. It’s rewarding to hear from some of them when they say: “Yes, now we can see what we did wrong and now we understand why we had problems in our work and in our approaches”

On behalf of ILDC and Partnership for Every Child Team we would like to express our gratitude to Judy Rycus - Program Director of  IHS for developing this valuable training program for social workers and to Ruby Johnston, Kathy Hallick, Pam Severs and others who delivered the training, mentored national trainers and gave their best to train this group of trainers! THANK YOU, ONCE AGAIN, FOR YOUR VALUABLE CONTRIBUTION IN DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONAL TRAINERS! 



NIKOLAY KULEBA VISITING ILDC OFFICE!

Nikolay Kuleba is the head of Kiev Children Service. We had a great opportunity to partner with him in the past. There were a great number of trainings conducted by ILDC for Kiev Children Service in the past. Today we can see the difference and many positive changes in the work of Children Services. They were able to decrease the number of children in the orphanages and tremendously increase the number of adoptions in Kiev city. There is a great desire of Kiev Children service staff to learn and to be better in their work. This was the reason why Nikolay Kuleba has visited ILDC. He expressed his intention to organize new series of trainings for the staff and workers of Kiev children services as well as other representatives from other centers that are working in the area of social work. As Nikolay shared, it is still extremely hard to change the old system of the child welfare here in Ukraine. It is essential to train social workers in Kiev, offering them best practice and really transforming their thinking.

 

In the meeting we were able to plan new trainings for Kiev Children Serrvice in near future.

With this opportunity we see one more significant step towards greater change in child welfare of Ukraine.

DEALING WITH TRAUMA

Training "Dealing with Trauma-Part 1"

ILDC had an opportunity to collaborate with Marek Wnuk from Poland, the founder of "Sunshine Center" in Kiev region, who has conducted a training for the social workers, psychologists, foster and adoptive parents today at our office!

There was about 13 people starting to go through the series of this training, which will continue later this spring with the Part II and III of this training. The group has greatly enjoyed their experience and look forward to the next training on this topic this spring!

The participants were so grateful to learn more info and skills on working with children, who have experienced trauma in their life. There was lots active learning, practical exercises to use with the kids presented and important info to consider! The feedback was very positive as the topic is so relevant and skills are greatly needed.

Thanks Marek for training for ILDC today!

SAD REALITY BUT TOGETHER WE CAN MAKE DIFFERENCE!!!

We have a new family that we work with right now and we would like briefly to share with you about this family and their story.

A widowed father with 5 children. Fathers name is Juliy Zeleyev and his kids Snezhana 12 years, Nadia 10 years, Natasha and Ira twins 7 years and youngest Denice 5 years old. They are all nice kids and their father himself is a good men. He served in a military for a long time in Kyrgyzstan. After his retirement he had returned to Ukraine. They bought a small house in a village and moved there. After some time his wife got very sick and died. He continue to take care of 5 children and did whatever he possibly could to provide for them. Couple of months ago Children Service came to them with intention to take his children away from him and place them into the orphanage. They claimed that their house was too small and too poor for them to live there. Poor father did not know what do and after experiencing a major stress he was hospitalized to the hospital with a suspect of a heart attack. Our staff Victoria found out about this situation and immediately went to find out what we can do for them. We have negotiated with our partner "True Hope" and agreed with them to place this family temporally into the house that was just renovated for their own project with a purpose so that Social Service would not claim again that this family do not have a proper facilities to live and children must be taken away fro their father. We have got few months  to help this family and to find the way how to make their own house better and livable so the children could stay with their father.Children do not want to go to the orphanage and want to stay with their father.

PLEASE SHARE THIS STORY WITH OTHERS!!!

PRAY THAT GOD WOULD HELP US TO STAND FOR THIS FAMILY AND TO WIN THE CASE IN THE COURT!