Ukraine

In the period of October - November 2009 Child Well-Being Fund Ukraine conducted the informational campaign "The pain from strapping has passed. But it remains between us" in Kiev city. This campaign was directed to parents who use physical punishments as a method of child upbringing. According to the results of the research made by Child Well-Being Fund in July 2009 near one third of respondents in Ukraine believe that physical punishment of children is not only acceptably but necessary. The idea of the campaign is to inform parents that physical punishment is a physical abuse. It is almost always accompanied with verbal offence and mental trauma and it makes huge harm to physical and mental health of a child.

The report Problem of Child Abuse: Attitudes and Experiences in Seven Countries of Central and Eastern Europe presents selected findings from a comparative research programme carried out in Bulgaria, Macedonia, Moldova, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Ukraine in 2009 and compares it with results from an analogous research from 2005 within the Childhood without Abuse - Toward a Better Child Protection System in Eastern Europe project. The project, coordinated by the Nobody's Children Foundation and financed by the OAK Foundation, was carried out in 2005 - 2009.

Child Well-Being Fund adopted a guide for professionals interviewing child witnesses -"How to interview a child". The book was originally written in Polish by Alicja Budzyńska, expert from the Nobody's Children Foundation. The publication consists of a set of practical guidelines for organising and carrying out interviews of children who take part in legal proceedings and examples of standard questions. The author emphasizes importance of assessing psychological state of a child and its developmental stage.

On 25th and 26th January project coordinators met to inaugurate new stage of the Childhood without Abuse project that will last from 2010 till 2013 and include organizations from Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland and Ukraine.