In the frame of the advocacy of the "Veteran's Journey Map" on 20 March 2024, a working meeting was held between Oleksandr Porkhun, Acting Minister of Veterans Affairs of Ukraine, and Marta Pyvovarenko, Head of the Department of Quality Assurance for MHPSS services of the Community Self-Help NGO.
They discussed areas of cooperation with a focus on veteran health:
Digitalization as a means of qualitative health assessment at each stage of the "veteran's journey" to compensate for health losses and budgeting for this.
Psychological rehabilitation. Training of psychotherapists, first-choice therapies, and filling the register of service providers with high-quality psychotherapists. The Ministry of Veterans is interested in psychologists who work in Cognitive Processing Therapy, in particular those trained by Viktor Burlaka (Wayne State University, USA) and Marta Pyvovarenko (Ukraine), and thanks to UNDP support, the number of cognitive-processing therapists in Ukraine is increasing every year.
Profiling and employment. Cooperation with businesses and development of effective mechanisms to enable veterans to find jobs without barriers, and for companies and employers to develop mechanisms and solutions that consider the need for veterans to restore their health for longer.
The participants also discussed the possibility of cooperating on the description of functional responsibilities and competencies for service providers for veterans in a multidisciplinary team (psychologist, social worker, speech therapist, etc.) and the importance of distributing service and veterans' organizations as they support the military and then the veteran as he or she moves along the "Veteran's Journey Map".
The activity of Community Self-Help NGO is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and is supported by ISAR Ednannia within the Ukraine Civil Society Sectoral Support Activity implemented by ISAR Ednannia in partnership with the Ukrainian Center of Independent Political Research (UCIPR) and Centre for Democracy and Rule of Law (CEDEM). The contents are the responsibility of Community Self-Help NGO and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government, or ISAR Ednannia.
