Research & Projects
CHILDREN FIRST!
Rights, Resilience and Reintegration in War and Recovery
Concept Status
Concept — Seeking Partners
Funding Status
seeking_partners
Why this matters
War-related displacement, repeated evacuation, family separation, disrupted education, health-service discontinuity, disability-related barriers, documentation problems and psychosocial stress interact rather than occur as isolated problems. Fragmented responses can leave families navigating multiple systems without a coherent pathway from evacuation to stable reintegration.
Why this matters now
Ukraine’s recovery will be structurally weaker if children and families must navigate displacement, return, education, health, disability support, documentation and social protection as separate systems. A child-centred integrated pathway can turn fragmented services into a coherent recovery architecture that protects rights and strengthens long-term human capital.
Primary objective
Design, pilot and evaluate an integrated rights-based child-and-family recovery pathway that connects legal, educational, health, rehabilitation, psychosocial and social-protection services from displacement or evacuation through return and stable reintegration.
Specific objectives
Map the legal, administrative and service barriers that interrupt a child’s pathway across displacement, evacuation, cross-border residence, return and reintegration.
Co-design a multidisciplinary referral and case-navigation model that is disability-inclusive, family-centred and suitable for local public systems.
Pilot the model in selected communities and, where feasible, cross-border partner settings while measuring continuity, timeliness, accessibility and family experience.
Produce policy, training and implementation tools that allow public authorities, universities and qualified implementing partners to replicate or adapt the model.
Methodology
Comparative legal and policy analysis across Ukrainian and selected host-country frameworks.
Mixed-method service-pathway research combining administrative mapping, stakeholder interviews and family/user journey analysis.
Participatory co-design with children’s rights, disability, education, health, rehabilitation and social-protection specialists.
Implementation research using pilot sites, process indicators, equity measures and iterative refinement rather than unverified impact claims.
Ethics, safeguarding and data-minimisation protocols appropriate to work involving children and potentially sensitive family information.
Core Research Question
How can Ukraine and partner countries design an integrated, rights-based pathway that protects a child across displacement, evacuation, cross-border residence, return and long-term reintegration?
Proposed Work Packages
Legal and administrative pathway mapping
Education continuity and recognition mapping
Child health, rehabilitation and psychosocial pathway mapping
Disability-inclusive service design
Family/caregiver support and social-protection analysis
Pilot integrated referral/reintegration model in selected communities
Policy and implementation toolkit for national and international partners
Geography
Ukraine, selected Ukrainian communities and cross-border partner settings
Target Groups
Displaced and returning children
Children living abroad
Children with disabilities
Caregivers and families
Service providers, schools, municipalities and relevant public institutions
Expected Outputs
Comparative legal and policy report
Service-pathway map and child/family needs framework
Pilot protocol and training materials
Policy brief series
Digital guidance prototype
Intended Outcomes
More coherent pathways from displacement to reintegration
Reduced administrative and service fragmentation
Stronger disability-inclusive and family-centred support
Proposed Indicators
Successful referral completion
Education continuity and document-resolution time
Access to rehabilitation and health services
Caregiver satisfaction and reintegration stability
Disability-accessibility measures
Partners Sought
Universities and child-rights research centres
Municipalities and education, health and social-protection institutions
Disability organisations and child-protection implementers
Foundations and international actors funding child protection and recovery
External Expertise Sought
Child protection
Paediatrics and public health
Psychology and mental health
Disability and rehabilitation
Education policy
Demography and data science
Relevant SDGs
3, 4, 10, 16, 17
Implementation architecture
Recommended duration: 36 months
- 12 months: A 12-month inception and design phase would establish the comparative evidence base, map legal and service pathways, co-design the integrated child-and-family model, and prepare a tightly scoped community pilot without claiming system-wide impact.
- 24 months: A 24-month standard implementation would add pilots in selected communities and cross-border settings, training, referral testing, family navigation, formative evaluation, and policy dialogue with institutions able to adopt the model.
- 36 months: A 36-month scale pathway would expand the tested model to several regions and partner-country settings, add comparative evaluation and implementation research, and prepare institutionalisation tools for national, local and international actors.
Beneficiaries
Primary beneficiaries
Displaced, evacuated, returning and reintegrating children, including children living abroad.
Children with disabilities, complex support needs or interrupted access to health, education and rehabilitation.
Parents, caregivers and family members navigating multiple public and non-governmental systems.
Secondary beneficiaries
Municipalities, schools, health and social-protection institutions responsible for continuity and reintegration.
Universities, research centres and specialist organisations developing evidence, training and scalable implementation models.
Consortium profile
The strongest consortium combines TNESC’s legal, governance and interdisciplinary research leadership with institutions that hold specialist child-protection, education, paediatric, public-health, rehabilitation, disability, psychosocial and implementation competence.
Required consortium roles
Academic/research coordinator with legal and governance competence.
Child-rights and child-protection research or implementation institution.
Health, paediatric, public-health, rehabilitation and disability specialist partners.
Education authority, university or school-network partner with recognition and reintegration experience.
Municipal or regional implementation sites able to pilot integrated pathways.
Independent monitoring/evaluation and safeguarding expertise.
Budget logic
Main cost drivers
Multidisciplinary research and coordination team.
Fieldwork, stakeholder engagement and family/user research with safeguarding controls.
Pilot implementation grants or service-integration costs in selected communities.
Training, translation, accessibility and disability-inclusive communication.
Digital navigation prototype and secure data-protection review.
Monitoring, evaluation, learning and independent ethics/safeguarding functions.
The budget should scale by delivery scenario rather than by an invented headline amount: research/design costs dominate the 12-month option, pilot and training costs grow in the 24-month option, and multi-region implementation, evaluation and institutionalisation become the main drivers at 36 months.
Risks & safeguards
Work involving children and families may expose sensitive personal, legal, disability or health information and create safeguarding obligations beyond ordinary academic research.
Use independent ethics review, child-safe participation rules, informed consent/assent, strict data minimisation and specialist safeguarding leadership; the public TNESC website must never store child case files or clinical records.
A broad integrated concept can become operationally diffuse if too many sectors are included without clear ownership, referral boundaries and pilot sequencing.
Define a minimum viable pathway, assign each work package to a named consortium competence, and expand only after process indicators show that core legal, education, health and protection interfaces function reliably.
Return and reintegration research can unintentionally be read as encouraging return regardless of safety, voluntariness or the individual best interests of the child.
Frame all return-related work around safe, voluntary, dignified and individually assessed pathways, with best-interest principles and cross-border case coordination built into research questions and implementation criteria.
Conflict conditions can interrupt fieldwork, services and longitudinal follow-up, producing biased samples and unstable implementation environments.
Use security-aware site selection, remote and hybrid research options, documented contingency protocols, multiple pilot locations and transparent reporting of attrition, access constraints and contextual limitations.
Funding alignment
- UNICEF Ukraine — Invest now for every child, for Ukraine’s recovery (2026)
The concept aligns thematically with UNICEF’s child-centred recovery framing, particularly integrated investments in education, health, family support, inclusion and locally led systems strengthening; this is funding context, not a TNESC partnership claim.
- European Commission — Ukraine Facility / Better Care and education recovery support (2026)
The project’s child-protection, education and reintegration architecture is relevant to EU recovery priorities that include education and transformation of child protection through Better Care; any future eligibility would depend on a specific call and consortium.
Evidence Sources
- UNICEF Ukraine — More than a third of Ukraine’s children remain displaced four years into war
- UNICEF Ukraine / Ministry of Social Policy — State Social Support for Persons and Children with Disabilities in Ukraine