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NaUKMA expresses sincere gratitude to the State Service of Education Quality of Ukraine for fruitful cooperation in the psychosocial support

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Published on Wednesday, 07 August 2024 07:49

The cooperation of NaUKMA and its Center for Mental Health and Psychosocial Support with the State Service of Education Quality of Ukraine – the central body of the executive power of Ukraine in the field of education, began with the joint project "SAFE SPACE – Emergency Psychological Support for Students and School Teachers" within a grant from the Austria’s Agency for Education and Internationalisation (OeAD-GmbH) under the support of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF).

The project started in 2022, and at that time, under the auspice and with the extensive support of the Service, the experts of the Center trained 42 trainers on the program of a multi-level package of educational and psychosocial interventions for teachers and school psychologists "Safe Space", successfully developed and piloted by the NaUKMA Center for Mental Health and Psychosocial Support[i]. These were the teachers of professional development institutes, institutes of postgraduate pedagogical education, departments of psychology and pedagogy in the higher educational institutions, psychological services within the educational system, centers for professional development of teachers, who, after the training, transferred the already acquired knowledge of the "Safe Space" program to teachers from different parts of Ukraine, both in the framework of this project, as well as within the joint project of the Center and the Service under the support of Plan International.

In total, for the period from 2022 to 2023, the NaUKMA Center for Mental Health and Psychosocial Support, in partnership with the Service, trained 7,223 teachers under the "Safe Space" program, as a result of which teachers received effective tools to help children, learned to support themselves and find their own resources, detect traumatized children, care for them and create emotionally safe classrooms, which in the times of war is an extremely important and difficult challenge. Also, in cooperation with the Service, the Center trained professional psychologists in the "Safe Space" program. In total, 187 psychologists were trained, who, after acquiring the skills, successfully continued to work with children in schools and implement the program in their communities. At present, cooperation continues and there are plans to train another 360 psychologists.

Fruitful collaboration also continues in the framework of the new project “SAFE SPACE 3 – Emergency Psychological Support for Students and School Teachers” under the support from the Austria’s Agency for Education and Internationalisation that is the continuation of the first two iterations of the project (“SAFE SPACE” and “SAFE” SPACE 2"), which already allowed to train 20 employees of the Professional Development Centers, who will further continue mastering a multi-stage program of psychosocial support and facilitation “Safe Space”, as well as will commence with the new training for 16 teachers of professional development institutes within the project “Support of Efforts for Combating Tuberculosis in Ukraine" under the support of PATH.

Therefore, NaUKMA and its Center for Mental Health and Psychosocial Support are sincerely grateful to the State Service of Education Quality of Ukraine for its support in building the potential of quality psychosocial support in Ukraine and are looking forward to fruitful cooperation in the future.