Social and rehabilitation services for children with disabilities and their families: reality and perspective of development

Social and rehabilitation services for children with disabilities and their families are extremely relevant today at the level of territorial communities, as the number of children and families who need them is constantly growing due to the Russian war against Ukraine. Social and rehabilitation services are a group of services aimed at restoring and/or developing social skills, abilities, strengths of children and their families, social support and social services for self-realization, increasing adaptive potential and ensuring access to resources necessary to overcome challenges associated with disability and ensuring the best interests of the child. It is important that these services are provided as close as possible to the child's place of residence and are accessible and high-quality. Therefore, the study examined the realities of providing these services and projected the prospects for their development in territorial communities for the target group. The strategy of "action research with community participation" was used to design the study. The data were collected quantitatively in communities of various types and processed using SPSS. According to the results of the analysis of the data obtained, it was found that in the studied communities there is a need for social and rehabilitation services, but not all of them receive them due to various reasons: the absence of a provider, the absence of the necessary service, the absence or unprofessionalism of a specialist, low material and technical support of the provider itself. However, despite a number of problems with obtaining social and rehabilitation services, recipients still noted a sufficient level of their provision. Regarding the prospects for the development of social and rehabilitation services, it is worth assessing the needs of residents of territorial communities in social and rehabilitation services for children with disabilities and their families, developing a network of providers, developing mechanisms for subvention and social ordering of the specified range of services, and informing the population about the features of their provision.