SOCIAL SERVICES FOR SINGLE-PARENT FAMILIES IN THE CONTEXT OF THE FAMILY POLICY

Abstract

In Ukraine, as in other European countries, the family and parenthood forms have pluralized in recent decades. In addition, the full-scale war resulted in the deaths of many men and women, both combatants and civilians, leaving many children without one or both parents. Thus, the practice of raising and supporting children by single mothers/fathers will continue to spread in our country. For such families, support and assistance from society are important, particularly, through quality social services provision. Purpose – to theoretically ground the possibilities of a client-centered approach usage to provide social services for single-parent families. The methods of scientific research included comparative analysis and generalization. The authors used information from open sources, expert opinions, and data from the State Statistics Service of Ukraine. As the analysis result, it was found that today the practice of social services provision to single-parent families is still dominated by a paternalistic model, which emphasizes subsidies and benefits. Instead, the authors believes that the more promising one is the model of “participation”, in which the client cooperates with a specialist through the joint formation of goals and objectives, identification of resources, and ways to achieve the goals. This model is based on the clientcentered approach, which has recently become widespread in Ukrainian social services. The work on the social services system organization for single-parent families in Ukraine seems important and relevant in modern social practice, especially during the war. It is necessary to constantly update programs and services, adjusting them to new realities and needs of the community.