Service revolution in communities: where and how will veterans’ assistants work?

What is the problem?

Ukrainian veterans returning from the front to civilian life need help and support. Still, it is not so easy to find help in readapting veterans to civilian life — finding a job, establishing new connections and contacts, and a new regime and routine. The families of Ukrainian fighters who have returned home will also need help. All of them will need a place of strength — a comprehensive solution that can be turned to for almost all issues of establishing a new life.

What is the solution?

A Veteran's Assistant service pilot project has already been launched in the Vinnytsia, Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, and Lviv regions. Currently, the project is an experiment, but the innovation proposed by it — service centers for veterans' affairs as centers of activity of the mentioned assistants and places of strength for veteran communities — may appear almost everywhere after the results of the pilot. In the next six months, the model of the system of veterans' assistants, on which the Ministry of Veterans is working together with partners, should acquire clear outlines. The initiative will be tested for now, and a clear vector for further development will be chosen.

Rubryka already explained what services the veteran's assistants will provide, yet the question remains — how exactly will the assistants' hubs function?

How does it work?

Right now, in the communities of the specified regions, in the practical efforts of organizational and managerial creativity, an image or a prototype of the previously mentioned veteran place of strength is being shaped. There will not be very strict frameworks here because communities will be able to organize such offices in accessible communal non-profit enterprises such as medical facilities, and assistants will also have remote workplaces. In addition, unified communities will be able to jointly create such offices in accordance with the law On the Cooperation of Territorial Communities.

However, communities, veterans, and their families need some clarity and understanding of what and where this assistance office will be and how it will function.

The most important thing to know is that service offices are located in community centers, and the organization of their work and provision of the appropriate material base is entrusted to local self-government bodies. They appoint heads of offices with the approval of the Ministry of Veterans Affairs and monitor their activities on the spot. The profile department recommends creating these hubs in existing non-profit enterprises through internally redistributing duties and staffing. 

During the experiment, the work of the veteran's assistant offices will have three levels of funding: the state and local budgets, as well as the involvement of resources from development partners. It has already been calculated that one assistant can provide professional support to no more than 100 clients. At most, 20 such specialists will work in a separate service office. During the day, the assistant must provide a maximum of 20 services to receive 16,000 hryvnias monthly. Services can be provided both online and offline.Svitlana Berezina, director of the Directorate of Strategic Planning and European Integration of the Ministry of Veterans Affairs, explains the prospects of future project.

Rubryka asked Svitlana Berezina, the chief of the Directorate of Strategic Planning and European Integration of the Ministry of Veterans Affairs, to explain the specifics of such modernization of the service component in communities.

She noted three options for creating a base for service offices. The first and most acceptable for communities is a communal non-profit enterprise.

The mechanism here is as follows. For example, an active non-profit institution providing medical or other services with a full staff is chosen. For it to serve veterans within the limits of the pilot, changes are being made to its founding documents, adding new functions. Changes are being made to the staff list; for example, five additional positions are foreseen, which will be called consultants for the time being since Ukraine does not yet have such a separate specialty as a veteran support specialist. They will perform the function of a veteran's assistant, financed by the state budget.

At the same time, the head of the enterprise or their deputy becomes the head of the service office, under whose auspices the veteran's assistants will work. Job skills of managers in the context of the new functionality will be improved during the two-day online training.

The office will be located on the premises of the enterprise. However, the project will not encourage exactly the office version of the assistant's work. It should represent a different type of service — proactive. They will constantly be in the administrative service offices, military commissariats, offices of social support, medical facilities, and community administrations. It is about presence in locations with the greatest flow of the target audience. "We have already asked the communities where they see such mobile jobs for veteran's assistants. In each case, they indicated their most optimal option," Berezina shared with Rubryka. 

Some communities can allocate separate offices with furniture and even office equipment. However, sometimes, this may not be the case, and the office, especially if it is a small community, will migrate together with the veteran's assistant, which should not affect their ability to help.

The main thing is that the assistants will be provided with official tablets with the necessary information about customers and the services provided. In addition, gadgets will be used to keep in touch with the Ministry of Veterans Affairs, particularly reporting and statistics channels. Berezina says they plan to provide all the assistants by the end of the summer. The development of special software for them is still ongoing. How effective and convenient it will be will be shown by the pilot's results and the customers' responses in the questionnaires regarding the service provision. For high-quality feedback, it is planned to create a suitable digital tool by the end of the year: service recipients will be able to leave their reactions in the e-office of the veteran's assistant.

The assistants will process applications and contact veterans and their families. After all, a former defender can be at home for a certain time, in a difficult psychological state, and will not be concerned about their future fate. For this, community centers should be created in communities where veterans would find understanding, communication, and consolation. This is like a point of reintegration efforts. There are great hopes that veteran assistants can become moderators and leaders of such communities. They will experiment with their place of work and ways of communicating with the veteran community to choose the most optimal, most convenient ones.

The second option for organizing such an office does not involve funding from the state budget but is simple for communities — it is budgeting from local resources. The mechanism is identical to the first method, but the assistant's services are paid for from the local budget. Some economically successful unified communities can keep several assistants in this way. The third option is using the expense of donors. This option, as assured by the veterans ministry, is only being worked out. There are some agreements with international partner organizations that could join the development of the veteran service, for example, on a grant basis. The practical participation of individual states is also welcomed.

During the first days of the work of the competitive selection for the corps of veteran's assistants, the Ministry of Veterans felt the interest of communities in the pilot project. Whether it will be possible to form a workable model that will function nationally from next year depends on their motivation and work for results, activity, and desire to provide feedback. After all, it is obvious what a challenge will come with the end of hostilities and the massive return of soldiers home. While there is time, Ukraine should create an effective tool and learn how to use it correctly.

The all-Ukrainian association of local self-governing Bodies, the "Ukrainian Association of District and Regional Councils," supported the initiative of the Ministry of Veterans to build offices for veterans' assistants and concluded a memorandum of cooperation with the department.

They note that the successful integration of male and female defenders into civilian life is one of the most important challenges for society. The specialized department alone cannot fully cope with it. The central government, local self-government of all levels, as well as non-governmental organizations and caring people, should unite here.

"The situation on the ground will tell who is better to select for the corps of veteran assistants. Not everyone is ready for work, which requires a lot of patience, compassion, understanding of the specifics of the veteran and his family, and even wisdom," Serhii Chernov, the president of the all-Ukrainian association of local self-governments "Ukrainian Association of District and Regional Councils" explains. "At the community level, all pros and cons of the initiative of the Ministry of Veterans at the experimental stage should be determined. This is our joint task, and there is no one to learn from because, despite global practice, we have a unique situation in terms of scale. We are doomed to find an effective mechanism for social protection, treatment, and rehabilitation of our soldiers, their employment, return to society, and labor communities."

He noted that individual communities, especially in villages, will not be able to organize a veteran's office independently, not so much due to a lack of financial resources as to a lack of appropriate specialists. According to Serhii Chernov, it is appropriate to combine efforts at the district level, involving the norm on the cooperation of the unified communities and the potential of the local deputy corps and military administrations. Chernov also expressed confidence that a constructive role can be played by focusing specifically on integrating veterans through employment and, in general, various forms of work.

"Together with the Ministry of Veterans Affairs and the Ministry of Education, we are working on training the demobilized as a priority in professional colleges that train specialists in labor specialties that will be in great demand during the country's reconstruction," the association's president shares with Rubryka. 

After the war's end, the demining topic will be especially relevant. The association is currently cooperating with the State Emergency Service and the Ministry of Defense to engage sappers who leave the military service in humanitarian demining on a professional basis. All territories, without exception, will need these specialists that have come under enemy fire. After all, while the land is mined, it is unsuitable for returning to economic and social life and is completely closed for any activity and investment. "This type of employment is also a possible scenario for many of Ukraine's defenders," Chernov suggests.

In his opinion, communities cannot be left alone in matters of relations with veterans. After all, there are big cities like Kyiv, Kharkiv, or Lviv with their financial, personnel, educational, and other capabilities. Still, there are also a huge number of communities, mostly rural ones, with radically worse opportunities. However, the service of escorting a veteran must be provided in full and of high quality everywhere.

"In the context of benefits, it should be honestly said that we are hostages of the political populism of the previous era, where the declared opportunities are often not realized in practice. If we are talking about veterans and, at the same time, community development, tools for development and self-sufficiency should be created here," Chernov continues. "Veterans do not need handouts, but special conditions for business and housing loans, retraining, leasing schemes. The set of tools can be large, especially if foreign companies and global experience are involved. Still, a veteran should not be humiliated with a handout (declared benefit) and raise another generation in the paradigm of consumerist paternalism of eating away," Chernov is convinced.

According to him, it will be worst if society repeats the mistakes of past practice and decades of flirting with the electorate. Appropriate conditions are necessary for those hundreds of thousands of veterans who can be active and able to provide a better life for themselves and the community through hard work.

Sooner or later, the idea of a Marshall Plan for Ukraine will become practical. Partners' resources, hardworking Ukrainian hands, and bright heads will be needed because no one will build a successful country instead of Ukrainians themselves. Therefore, the best option for integrating those who will come out of the trenches is involvement in the economy and development of the state. Veterans' assistants can become moderators of such a process in communities.

Author: Gennady Karpyuk