The Most Precious Thing in this World is a Child’s Smile

Children are the most valuable resource of humanity. If we want to understand how the state will look at the world in 15–20 years, we need to look into children’s eyes today. What will we see there? Love? Support? A sense of safety? Curiosity? Joy?
 Unfortunately, not every pair of eyes radiates this. Due to various circumstances, the adults important to a child may not know how, may not want to, or may not have the opportunity to provide a safe and trusting environment for growth. This is not about “good” or “bad” parents. This is about the need for the state to foster a culture of seeking help and to create a network of organizations capable of providing timely and qualified support.

Recently, Ukraine adopted two important Strategies:

1. The Strategy for Ensuring the Right of Every Child in Ukraine to Grow Up in a Family Environment for 2024–2028 and the approval of the operational action plan for 2024–2026 (# 1201).
2. The National Strategy for the Protection of Children’s Rights in the Field of Justice for 2025–2028 (# 708).

The Family Center “Dotyk” is ready to become part of the implementation of these Strategies by providing qualified interdisciplinary support to children themselves, as well as to biological parents, foster parents, and guardians.

Why are we ready to do this? Because we believe that every child has the right and deserves healthy psychophysiological development, the right to feel safe, the right to support and protection, the right to a smile and to the feeling that they matter. In our work, we act in the best interests of the child, and therefore, in line with the objectives of Strategy # 1201, we are ready to:

1. Strengthen the capacity of families with children to provide care and upbringing through mediation, parental consultations, systematic support for parent-child contacts, psychological support for families, educational programs for parents, and comprehensive case management. Mediation between parents helps reduce conflict in the family. Among the expected results, we foresee an increase in the percentage of families who, after support, improve their ability to communicate constructively and share parenting responsibilities and childcare. Reduced parental conflicts and enhanced parenting competence will help more children remain in their family environment.
2. Ensure that orphans and children deprived of parental care grow up in a family environment by supporting contacts between children and relatives, preparing both for reunification, and working with foster families to prevent future conflicts while providing psychosocial support for children and adults. We expect more children to find loving families and preserve family ties, which will reduce the number of children in institutions and ensure safe restoration and maintenance of contact with both foster and biological parents or relatives.
3. Ensure family upbringing for displaced and evacuated children by organizing safe remote and in-person contacts, providing mediation between host and biological families, which will improve children’s psycho-emotional well-being and ease adaptation to a new environment.

In terms of implementing Strategy # 708, we can also:

• Provide comprehensive support to children who have suffered from violence or lost contact with close relatives.
• Support children in difficult life circumstances, including those from the families of Ukraine’s defenders, internally displaced persons (IDPs), and other vulnerable groups.
• Develop and implement joint protocols to prevent children from losing contact with one of their parents.
• Promote the development of interdisciplinary teams and comprehensive family support models.
• Ensure children’s protection from secondary victimization during participation in legal procedures.
• Develop and expand restorative practices, scaling restorative justice programs for minors through the preparation of methodological materials and professional training for social workers and justice specialists.

These Strategies are an important step by the state towards the child. Now, what is needed are the hands that will bring these Strategies to life. For us, it is an honor to be part of this movement towards the child and to be involved in the lives of these little ones — children who can grow into truly great people, if we reach out to them now with support, care, and hope.