Ukraine’s most vulnerable children in increasing peril, charity warns

Children living in care with long-term medical conditions in Ukraine are in increasingly desperate need of vital medicines, charity leaders warned yesterday.

The warning came as The Sunday Post visited an orphanage in the south of the country where carers revealed deliveries of vital medicines for the children, many of whom endure serious illness or disability, were increasingly sporadic. “We just don’t know what tomorrow will bring,” said one.

The Lumos Foundation has launched an emergency appeal to help children in the war-torn country and intends to send food, medicine and other life-saving supplies to some of its most vulnerable young people.

The charity has for several years been co-operating with the Ukrainian government to better protect vulnerable children and reform its care system but the war has given its work a new urgency.

Tricia Young, the charity’s director of global systems change, said: “Ukraine, like many former Soviet countries, did not have the infrastructure to keep these children with their families and we work with the authorities to support children in their communities.

“We exist to ensure that every child can grow up with the love and support of their family. It is a universal need. When we speak to the Ukrainian authorities online we hear the air raid sirens go off, the line go dead and the power then cut.

“They have to leave and run to seek refuge in basements and shelters in what has become a normal day in Ukraine. They are supportive of our work.”

The UK charity, supported by Harry Potter author JK Rowling who has promised to match every donation up to a total of £1 million, currently supports 1,887 children and 5,295 families in the Zhytomyr area, 87 miles west of Kyiv.

Before the war Ukraine had 100,000 children and young people living in about 700 institutions – one of the highest rates in Europe. Of them, 93% have some medical condition and 22% of that 93% have an intellectual cognitive disability.

Next month the charity’s workers will move into Odessa. While Russian forces have not reached the city it is just 80 miles from Mykolaiv, which has seen heavy fighting.

Young said: “We will distribute emergency aid in Odessa and work with an NGO to do so. The plan is to support 7,250 children from 5,050 families in desperate need there.

“Some of the most disabled children are the most vulnerable, unable to move or be transferred. Their pressing needs are food, hygiene, medical items and fuel.

“Medicines in Ukrainian language which they can understand, is vital. They cannot administer medicines if they cannot read how. Our team also go around delivering psycho-social first aid to vulnerable children traumatised by war.”

The charity’s workers have faced considerable dangers. “Two of our young self-advocates do not have any parental support and we paid for them to leave Kyiv and live in a hostel in Lviv which is now coming under bombardment. Another of our co-ordinators is living in a basement,” said Young.

Last month Unicef, the United Nations’ children’s agency, revealed 1.5 million Ukrainian children had been forced to flee their homes, and that human traffickers were trying to target youngsters who have been separated from their families.

Lumos aims to help families remain in their homes, rather than risk evacuation, and to reunite displaced children with their families. Young said: “There are growing stories of children being targeted at the borders by traffickers. If children who are evacuated are not registered, there is also great risk of family breakdown especially if the parents then have to flee their homes.”

wearelumos.org