A series of seminars for social workers got underway in Amur Oblast

9 march 2023

March 1-3 saw the cities of Blagoveshchensk and Svobodny host a set of seminars for social workers held within the framework of Family as a Place of Power, a joint project implemented by SIBUR together with the Russian Committee of SOS Children's Villages, a charitable non-profit, and supported by Amur Oblast’s Ministry of Social Protection. Experts from St. Petersburg and Novgorod spent two days sharing their expertise in working with families in crisis and families raising children with disabilities.

Ahead of the launch of the seminar, a focus group meeting was held in Svobodny to analyze the results of the previous year's work and to set objectives for the project’s further development. Elena Snezhko, head of the Formula for Good Deeds, SIBUR's social investment program, greeted the meeting’s participants with the following words:

I am really very glad to see the number of practitioners attending our events continue growing, not only thanks to the influx of those representing municipal agencies, but also due to the growing interest shown by non-profit organizations. I believe that this shows that the project is important and relevant for different areas and organizations of our region. My sincere thanks go out to the region’s Ministry of Social Protection that has been supporting this project for two years. Their support has made it possible for us to do this work in a systematic manner with the involvement of a broad range of subject matter experts.

The two-day-long workshop was attended by 67 people coming from all over Amur Oblast. The training provided at the class covered several topics including childhood trauma, dependency and co-dependent relationships, techniques used to provide support to families in crisis, and methods of working with families raising children with disabilities.

Olga Lipnitskaya, head of the social orphanhood prevention and family strengthening unit at the Russian Committee of SOS Children's Villages, a regular presence at the project’s seminars, highlighted some of the achievements that had been made over the preceding years:

This year's project has shown that we succeeded in building a professional community in this sector. We have areas of common interest and people are ready to talk and share stories of the difficulties they have to deal with in this line of work. We have been running many of our cases together and have been able to succeed in achieving our goals and results. The principal feature of our sessions is that we don't come to these gatherings with the topics that only we find interesting. We usually get a request from the region in question in advance, go over it together and then prepare our workshops and webinars based on such requests. When we finally meet in Amur Oblast, we do not do it in line with the "teacher-student" dichotomy but rather we meet as partners, colleagues, and by working together we change the lives of local families for the better.

The workshop’s attendees learned new methods and techniques that would come in handy in their line of work and they are already planning to attend the project’s final workshop scheduled to take place in October. Oksana Avdeyeva, a social teacher with the Tynda Social and Rehabilitation Center for Minors, a regular participant of the events, thus commented on her impressions:

I’m overwhelmed. Our colleagues presented to us a lot of cases that will help us with our work. I’m putting to use everything they teach us and bring us all the time including genograms, sociocards, the pyramid of needs, etc. I have been attending all of their seminars, and the techniques I learned there really help me in my work with substitute families. To give you one example, the problems of single fathers and that of substitute families are very acute in our region. We deal with them using all of the methods that our colleagues had been teaching us. I intend to make the new knowledge I have received a part my work right away.