SIBUR and Children's Villages-SOS Held a Workshop in Voronezh on Social Work Practices
22 april 2021
Social workers met in Voronezh to share their practices and tools for dealing with families in crisis and for preventing orphanhood. This topic was chosen as the main theme of a workshop that took place on April 14-15 as part of the World Around You 2021, an interregional project. This project is a follow-on to the cooperation between SIBUR and Children's Villages-SOS, an international charitable organization. This is the first time it was held in Voronezh thus enabling participation of experts from various cities from across Voronezh Oblast.
The workshop was attended by twenty representatives of helping professions. The list of attendees included teachers and psychologists from Voronezh’s Regional Specialized Children's Home and Voronezh Oblast’s Central Psychological, Medical and Pedagogical Commission, as well as experts representing social care services and Voronezh-based non-profit organizations. The workshop was moderated by representatives of Children's Villages-SOS: Olga Lipnitskaya, National Advisor on Family Strengthening and Orphanhood Prevention Programs, and Olesya Yashkina from Children's Villages-SOS Pushkin, director of projects and programs aimed at preventing child abandonment and strengthening families.
Workshop participants shared their experiences in working with families and children in difficult circumstances focusing in particular on the potential of using visual techniques and graphic methods for dealing with important issues such as overcoming psychological trauma, improving parent-child relations, and replenishing one’s emotional and other types of resources.
I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the organizers of the workshop. In a nutshell, all workshop’s speakers share such great qualities as competence, openness, ability to maintain dialogue and willingness to share their knowledge. I am certain that I will be using those practical tools that I was shown there both in my work and in my life. The atmosphere throughout the whole event was so sincere, supportive and friendly that when came time for us to part our ways many people’s eyes filled up in tears. Thank you so much, that was unforgettable! We will be looking forward to seeing you again, noted Lyubov Bugakova, an employee of PERSPEKTIVA, Voronezh’s Regional Charity Non-Profit.
The World Around You project will continue until October 2021 and will be hosted by Voronezh, Nizhegorodskaya and Amur Oblasts.
At the workshop for practitioners working with families in crisis in Voronezh, we discussed a family-centric approach in social work. We learned such visual techniques as ecomaps, genograms, and conflict mapping. This was an opportunity to see firsthand the practicability and the effectiveness of Children's Villages-SOS’s original methods and programs of preventing child abandonment and for strengthening families. Over the course of the two days of the workshop, we were able to briefly touch upon state-of-the-art practices of dealing with a complex trauma. Workshop participants were given an opportunity to work through their personal histories, reinforce their resources, and maintain their professional competencies, said Olga Lipnitskaya, National Advisor on Family Strengthening and Orphanhood Prevention Programs at Children's Villages-SOS Russia.
Further information about the joint program of SIBUR and Children's Villages-SOS is available on the Formula for Good Deeds’ website at https://www.formula-hd.ru/projects/city/sos/