International experience of social care protection of families raising children with disabilities

Abstract

Introduction. At present, the priority of social policy in Ukraine is to ensure a fair standard of living for all categories of the population who find themselves in difficult life circumstances, including families raising children with disabilities. Over the past 5 years, the number of Ukrainian families raising children with disabilities has increased by 20% according to the State Statistics Service of Ukraine. This is due to various environmental, social, economic, and other factors that harm the general health of the population.

In the research circle, scholars consider the family as a center for the upbringing and development of a child with a disability, because for this child, the family is primarily the main environment for rehabilitation. However, the family cannot be considered solely from the point of view of rehabilitation, because the family is a social group that carries out its activities based on a common economic, domestic, moral, and psychological way of life. Families with children with disabilities face many difficulties and problems, from medical to social, but the most pressing and common problems of such families are financial. Given the economic situation in Ukraine and the economic opportunities of Ukrainian families, it is safe to say that the social security system in Ukraine is not able to fully help families raising children with disabilities financially, as benefits are insignificant and the variability of such benefits is negligible. This actualizes the study of social protection of families with children with disabilities, in particular the study of international innovative methods of social welfare provision to this category of the population.

The aim of the article is a theoretical analysis of global innovation mechanisms and approaches to social welfare provision to families raising children with disabilities for their further implementation in Ukraine.

Methodology. The theoretical foundation of this article is based on world socio-economic theories, scientific approaches to solving problems of social welfare, and the social work theories. General scientific research methods were used, in particular, structural-functional to reveal the types of social assistance and existing technologies and methods of calculating social benefits for families raising children with disabilities in Ukraine; comparison – to study the world's innovative social welfare technologies.

Results. It has been confirmed that the social welfare provision to families raising children with disabilities is one of the priority tasks of social policy both in Ukraine and in the world. An analysis of international innovative mechanisms and approaches of social welfare provision to families, who raise children with disabilities has been carried out. Improvement of the Ukrainian social welfare system has been suggested by introducing world tendencies of social protection of families raising children with disabilities.