AFEW-Ukraine held a working meeting of the expert group in the field of providing services to most-at-risk adolescents

AFEW-Ukraine held a working meeting of an expert group in the field of providing services to most-at-risk adolescents. During the meeting, Olga Balakireva, the chairman of the board of the Ukrainian Institute for Social Research after Oleksandr Yaremenko, made a presentation on the assessment of the situation in the country with the aim of strengthening of the component on working with adolescents within the framework of the national program on HIV/AIDS.

Participants of the meeting also discussed the most important problems related to most-at-risk adolescents, such as: outdated forms and approaches to work with adolescents, insufficient competence of specialists, problems in teaching adolescents, drug use, legislative gaps, problems with access to services, lack of statistics on MARA, stigma in society and self-stigma, insufficient involvement of the family in the work and others. Regulations, tasks of the group and further steps were also discussed.

The AFEW-Ukraine team is pleased that we managed to meet such a wide range of experts, and sincerely hopes that we will be able to hold such meetings on a regular basis.