COMPREHENSIVE SUPPORT AND CORRECTION OF CHILDREN-ORPHANS’ DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The article considers the issue of comprehensive support and correction of the development of children-orphans. A significant part of orphans, who had been living at boarding schools, and are nowadays brought up in family-type children's homes or foster families, require special attention, because most of them have serious problems in mental, physical development and social adaptation. Across Ukraine there are 88,000 "social orphans", young disabled children abandoned by their parents and handed over to the state. Orphans of boarding schools, who came to family-type children's homes and foster families need effective psychological, medical and educational support. This help can be provided in the process of effective functioning of social-psychological services. The following types of psychological support are used for children-orphans and children deprived of parental care: individual consulting, group work, psycho-correction and psychotherapy. The delay in the mental development (mental retardation) is often observed among the pupils of boarding schools. Delays in their mental development occur as a result of the central nervous system weakening caused by infections, chronic medical conditions, disorders in the endocrine system, intoxication, brain injuries etc. Psychological support for children with developmental disorders is considered as a complex system of psychological and rehabilitative actions aimed at increasing social activity, development of autonomy, strengthening of social position of the child's personality, formation of the system of values and attitudes, development of intelligent processes that correspond to mental and physical abilities of the child. In the process of psychological support, a psychologist's work is focused on the correction of the child's mental development after trauma, the restoring of personal integrity, a sense of balance. Only after the elimination of the negative consequences of psychological, physical, emotional, sexual traumas one can begin working on productive mental development of the child. The programme of psychological support of personal qualities formation of children-orphans and children deprived of parental care has been developed and approbated, which makes it possible to improve the communicative abilities of children, increase confidence, reduce anxiety, form the responsible attitude towards their intellectual development, and develop the ability to feel happy.