The Russian-Ukrainian war forced a large number of Ukrainian families to leave the occupied and frontline territories with only the most necessary things. Some managed to adapt to their new place of residence, including finding work and housing. Others, on the contrary, failed to find themselves in the new community. Such people try to return to their native village at the earliest opportunity. Even though their homes may have been destroyed, they face serious employment problems.
Of course, changes in the lives of parents, their problems and experiences directly affect children, who are just as difficult as adults to adapt to new conditions after a forced move, UNN writes.
As of March 2024, about one million of the nearly five million officially registered internally displaced persons in Ukraine were children under the age of 18.
It is clear that these children should attend kindergartens and schools. However, statistics show that parents and guardians of displaced children prefer their online education in the educational institutions they attended before.
For example, according to the New Ukrainian School, in some regional centers of Ukraine, in Ternopil, only 28% of displaced children attend educational institutions, and in Vinnytsia and Kropyvnytskyi, 32% each.
According to the NUS, some IDP families want their children to study at their native school, where everyone is familiar and everything is familiar. Even if the educational institution is working remotely and it is not known when it will be able to resume full-time education. Some have concerns that their child will not be accepted in the new team or will be treated differently. Therefore, they stay in their class and school despite the fact that they study and communicate at a distance.
There is also the factor that schools that were forced to switch to online learning because of the war are trying to keep their teachers and students because they fear that they will be closed.
Instead, experts interviewed by UNN are convinced that displaced children must attend kindergartens and schools in their new place of residence, as this is an important factor in their rapid adaptation and socialization in the new environment.
Unfortunately, very often children do not go offline to those schools or kindergartens. Either their parents don't let them go, or for other reasons, or they are simply comfortable with their old teachers in their old schools to study remotely. But this is precisely what prevents them from adapting normally, because schools and kindergartens are the places where children spend half of their active time. And these are actually the places of reintegration, socialization into the community they find themselves in. New friends and acquaintances are made there. You can't socialize when you are in another place and spend 5-6 hours of your school time online, and then you go out into a community you don't know, and what are you looking for there? This is especially difficult for children. Every school has social educators and practical psychologists who know exactly what to do with internally displaced children, with IDPs, and try to smoothly adapt them to life in the local community, to forget about the stress they have experienced. In short, psychologists are working with this. Therefore, the first thing to do is to actually make sure that children go to school and kindergarten
At the same time, psychologists note that teachers should monitor the process of adaptation of IDP children, but in no case should they separate them.
School staff and teachers should understand that there are children who may need additional attention, and perhaps a psychologist should be organized to accompany them. But I don't think they should be singled out in any particular way. Because it may happen that there will be such rent-seeking behavior when singling out these children may, on the contrary, contribute to their separation rather than integration. Adults should be aware of this. And a child, if he or she wants to share his or her background, can share it personally. It is just necessary to create conditions, as for any child who comes to a new school, so that there is no bullying and similar things. But this is done with all newcomers - not only with those who came from the occupied territories. Any new child should join the school community through acquaintance, through some integration steps, etc
Obviously, the process of children's integration in a new place of residence depends on the intentions and decisions of their parents. But communities themselves need to create conditions for boys and girls who have been forced to leave their homes to adapt more quickly. In particular, the Brovary community in Kyiv Oblast pays considerable attention to this issue.
Currently, 661 and 1185 IDP children attend kindergartens and lyceums in our community, respectively. Our preschool and educational institutions are staffed by excellent educators, teachers, and psychologists who understand that these children have lost their homes, friends, and social circle. Our specialists make every effort to ensure that these children do not feel like strangers. Employees of the Department of Education communicate with parents, convince them that children should communicate with their peers in real life, that offline learning, personal communication with teachers allows children to learn better. And most importantly, we take a clear position that there are no strangers' children. No matter where they come from in Ukraine, they are all children of the Brovary community