Children's Living Places - Childcare in Ukraine

The SOS Children’s Villages in Denmark and Ukraine, together with a coalition of partners, wish to spearhead a new era of alternative care and protection for children placed outside their home in Ukraine.

Together with a number of partners in both the construction industry, foundations and local and national authorities in Ukraine, the ambition is to use the Children’s Living Places project as a best practice model for family-like care to move towards a de-institutionalization in Ukraine while keeping focus on working preventively with children and their families to avoid children being placed outside their home. For those children for whom placement is the best solution, SOS Children’s Villages will push for a greater spread of foster families in Ukraine than is the case today.

Sustainable solutions

Children’s Living Places combines more sustainable building design with social sustainability in the form of family-like care as well as preventative support for families who are struggling. In collaboration with both local and national authorities, SOS Children’s Villages will use the project to advocate for positive long-term changes in the Ukrainian childcare sector.

Why is there a need for better care in Ukraine?

Children’s Living Places will ensure better care for the children who need it, and at the same time ensure that far fewer children are separated from their parents and placed outside the home.

Ukraine has tried to reform the childcare system for decades without success, and today there is more than 700 institutions in the country. Several studies show that institutions can be damaging to children both physically and mentally, the longer the children are institutionalized the more damage.

Today, over 90 percent of the children in care in Ukraine have one or both parents who have full custody. Many of the children placed in the institutions do not live in an institution, because they have lost parental care, have a special diagnosis or a serious illness, but because their families are struggling financially or socially. With social preventive efforts for families, many parents would be able to keep their children at home if provided with financial support and social counseling.

The Ukrainian government promised in 2023 to put an end to the many harmful institutions and move to family-like care environments, as part of Ukraine’s process towards joining the EU. It is this effort for a positive change that SOS Children’s Villages in Denmark and in Ukraine wish to support as much as possible.

Why build new homes for foster families in Ukraine?

The war in Ukraine has brought devastating consequences for millions of Ukrainians, many of whom have lost their homes. The World Bank estimates that more than 10 percent of the total housing stock in Ukraine is either damaged or destroyed by the war and that close to 2 million households are affected.

Estimates point to a total cost of damage to the housing sector to be 55.9 billion dollars and the need for recovery and reconstruction of the housing sector is estimated to be 80.3 billion dollars. The need for rebuilding new homes is urgent and immense, and at the same time it is important that Ukraine will be rebuilt in a sustainable and climate positive manner.

The new homes built for Children’s Living Places follow the Living Places concept, developed by the VELUX Group in collaboration with EFFEKT architects and Artelia engineers, that ensures a lower CO2-footprint. The building materials and building technique is designed to reduce environmental impact and ensure a healthy indoor environment for the families.

Millions of Ukrainians are internally displaced because of the war, this includes foster families too. By building new homes for foster families, the Children’s Living Project aims to combine the rebuilding of Ukraine with the reformation of the country’s childcare sector for a long-term positive change.