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Right to Protection held The Hromadas Forum 2024: Psychological Services

June 17, 2024

Right to Protection's Mental Health Care Service, with the support of its partner IRC, held The Hromadas Forum 2024: Psychological Services. The event brought together representatives of hromadas from 12 oblasts of Ukraine, united by common integration challenges and needs that exceed their capacities.

Together with the speakers and thanks to the participants' different experiences, they were looking for ways to develop psychosocial services at the local level further. Most hromadas identified a problem: the lack of qualified mental health support staff and psychologists in the non-governmental sector (mobile groups) who have to work with the increasingly complex requests that have arisen over the long war period.

WHO guest speaker Kateryna Krizhik presented the main directions of the Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Working Group's work and the opportunities available on its platforms.

This event is the first of two all-Ukrainian forums held this year by R2P on mental health support. It developed a number of solutions to problematic issues that can be helped by specialised organisations providing psychosocial support. The Second Forum of psychosocial services addresses these issues and offers a vision of how non-governmental organisations can improve services at the hromadas' level.

The key focus of the Forum:

• Power of hromadas: accumulation of hromada experience and its application.
• Nothing about us without us: the importance of hromadas representatives' participation in discussing processes, legislative initiatives and difficulties with implementation on the ground to address problematic issues better.

One of the main issues discussed at the Forum was integrating people with different war experiences in hromadas. Representatives of the hromadas became friends with each other, actively discussed the projects implemented in various places, shared experiences and generated ideas for possible joint initiatives or projects. The most valuable feedback was: "Sharing experiences, working in groups!". The Forum was attended by representatives of social services, local governments, IDP councils, and active residents involved in improving the field of psychosocial assistance. Everyone was able to add to their vision of the problems and suggest ways to solve them.

The event was in partnership with the International Rescue Committee in Ukraine (IRC) and supported by USAID's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA).