Author:
Mariia Kucova
Starting in October, the regional “Voices of Children” center in Ternopil will be closing. For the past year and a half, a dedicated team of three psychologists and a coordinator has been offering psychosocial support to families and children impacted by the war.
Thank you for your work, for the happy faces of the children, for the new emotions they experienced,
reads one testimonial from the Ternopil center.
reads one testimonial from the Ternopil center.
The Foundation is not completely pulling out of Ternopil — locals will still be able to get online psychological support.
The Ternopil center’s achievements
Even though the city has not faced the worst of the conflict, the war has left its scars on Ternopil. People are grappling with anxiety, air raid alerts, power outages, and personal losses. Many families of internally displaced persons (IDPs), whose loved ones are fighting at the front, have settled in the city.
We worked with entire families, says Iryna Hornitska, team leader and psychologist at the Ternopil center: Sometimes three psychologists would work with one family, which could include a grandmother, a mother, and a child. For example, if the child was facing bullying at school, we focused on helping them adjust socially. For the mother and grandmother, who had been displaced and whose husbands were at war, we first worked on stabilizing their situation as displaced individuals and then addressed the unique challenges they faced as military families.
When the center opened in March 2023, it was staffed by two psychologists, Iryna Hornitska and Iryna Fents. Later, they were joined by psychologist Svitlana Lomovtseva and coordinator Yuliia Drebeda.
Since officially starting operations in April, the team has supported 1,064 children and 481 adults. They have conducted:
- 836 individual sessions with children and 579 with adults;
- 60 group therapy sessions for children and 32 for adults;
- 119 psychosocial support groups for both children and adults;
- 10 family-focused psychosocial sessions.
In addition, the Foundation’s specialists organized school events, took part in partner initiatives, and coordinated with other organizations to refer people for additional support when necessary.
Thanks to the “Voices of Children” Foundation, Ternopil has created a safe space for families with children. Since the city is small, the specialists often run into the people they helped, and children continued coming to the center until its final days.
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