On August 8, 2026, an Interregional Forum for employees of social protection agencies, titled “Forum for Social Change: Ways to Support Older Adults from Displacement to Integration,” was held in Kropyvnytskyi.
The interregional forum was organized by the “Stabilization Support Services” Charitable Foundation as part of a project to strengthen the capacity of the social protection system, implemented with the support of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Ukraine (UNHCR).
The forum was attended by representatives of the regional state administration’s departments, representatives of social protection institutions and agencies in the Donetsk, Poltava, Kirovohrad, Zaporizhzhia, and Dnipropetrovsk regions, as well as representatives of UN agencies, international non-governmental organizations, and the charitable and humanitarian sectors.
The forum discussed ways to build communities’ capacity to develop effective solutions for the adaptation and integration of internally displaced persons who are elderly or have limited mobility, and analyzed the implementation of pilot projects aimed at providing internally displaced elderly people and and people with disabilities, based on the “money follows the person” principle, as well as the introduction of a contractual model for providing shelter services to people with limited mobility among internally displaced persons and displaced persons.
The forum served as a bridge for interregional exchange of experience and facilitated the development of partnerships between social service providers in Donetsk Oblast and their colleagues from safer regions of Ukraine.