Strategic Program 1. Helping orphans and foster families

In the United States, 442,000 children are in foster care, and over 8 million children around the world live in orphanages and other institutions (according to Kidsave International).

Being part of a family is a basic human need and essential to well-being, especially for teenagers and young adults who are developing rapidly and transitioning to independence, as documented in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2015 report, Every Kid Needs a Family. The new data reflect a growing consensus among practitioners and policymakers that young people in the child welfare system should live in families. When a group placement is required to address specific issues such as mental health needs, the child should stay only as long as is needed to address those needs. Group placements should be designed to help children return to a family as soon as possible.

The Family First Prevention Services Act, signed into law in 2018, seeks to accelerate movement toward this vision, emphasizing prevention services, prioritizing family placement and incentivizing high-quality, residential help. The law follows a long tradition of federal legislation designed to ensure children and teens grow up in a family. It recognizes that too many children are unnecessarily separated from parents who could provide safe and loving care if given access to needed mental health services, substance abuse treatment or guidance for improving their parenting skills. (Source: Keeping kids in families. Trends in U.S. Foster Care Placement)

Within this Strategic Program, our experts provide necessary training to foster care specialists on further work with families on improving their parenting skills through the knowledge of children’s psychology, applying self-control methods and upbringing techniques based on motivation versus punishment.

Expected results

1. Active hands-on training programs for prospective foster parents with ongoing support.
2. Recurring screening programs to ensure a child’s psychological well-being in the foster family.
3. Educating 1,000 foster care specialists annually.

Strategic Program 2. Developing school mediation services

In public schools, there are children from various social groups, nationalities and religions. This creates a potential conflict environment in which students spend a significant part of their time. Features of the psycho-emotional development of children and adolescents that are characteristic of their age such as the need for communication, self-affirmation among peers, and striving to belong to a particular group also contribute to conflict situations. Conflicts may arise among students, and with teachers and the school administration. As a rule, the result of a reaction to a conflict involving a student may result in administrative punishment or a threat of punishment. Moreover, as a rule, there is no real resolution of the conflict. As a result, students do not master constructive ways of resolving conflict situations, which can lead to feeling helpless or, on the other hand, their use of force.

The best conflict resolution is to satisfy the interests of all participants by getting every conflict party involved in the development of a common solution. Having accepted responsibility for resolving the situation, the parties to the conflict are likely to no longer be in a similar situation. To achieve a mutually acceptable solution, a mediation approach involving a neutral mediator is required. The mediator helps all participants to reduce emotional tension, find the best way out of the conflict and to discuss how to avoid a similar occurrence in the future.

School mediation service helps conflict participants find a way out of a problem situation that will satisfy everyone. Mediators can work with situations of bullying, fights, theft, property damage, group and ethnic conflicts. At the same time, the main feature of school mediation services is that teenagers can act as mediators under the guidance of adults.

Expected results

1. Training system for specialists and volunteers providing mediation services to children and families, with constant information, consultation and supervisory support.
2. Practitioner’s Handbook with standards and algorithms guiding the activities of inter-regional, municipal and school mediation services.
3. Multilevel system of inter-regional, municipal and school mediation services.
4. Media programs to raise public awareness of methods for the prevention of psychological distress; to increase the demand for mediation services as an effective means of strengthening the institution of the family; to reduce the harm of dysfunctional conflicts; to overcome stigmatization of vulnerable groups of children; to create a favorable, humane and safe environment for the development and socialization of children; to improve the psychological climate in society as a whole.

Strategic Program 3. Building loving communities

We have seen a great need in the multidisciplinary prevention strategies at the community level that support the development of children in healthy social environments.

Community services include supported housing with full or partial supervision (including halfway houses), psychiatric wards of general hospitals (including partial hospitalization), local primary care medical services, day centers or clubhouses, community mental health centers, and self-help groups for mental health.

The World Health Organization states that community mental health services are more accessible and effective, lessen social exclusion, and are likely to have fewer possibilities for the neglect and violations of human rights that are often encountered in mental hospitals.

New legal powers developed in the United States supervise and ensure compliance with treatment of individuals living in the community to national standards. However, it is important to engage alternative health care providers and NGOs to equip such communities with prevention techniques, which help to improve health on the peer-to-peer basis.

Within this strategic program, we are working closely with the communities at large by training community leaders, including children and youth, on various techniques of improving psychological well-being.

Expected results

1. Peer-to-peer network community of volunteers to support community members in improving psychological well-being.
2. Local mass media workshops on addressing psychological issues and informing local communities on available remedies, services and community support.
3. Self-help groups in each state to support the community members in preventing psychological disorders and creating loving and supporting atmosphere in the neighborhoods.