Webinar Series on Safety: Summing Up the Results

Since September of last year, an extremely important role has appeared in all Lviv schools — the safety coordinator.

As part of the HOVORY project, UCU's Centre for Child Dignity, in partnership with the Department of Education and Culture of the Lviv City Council, held a series of three webinars for school safety coordinators.

Together with leading psychotherapists, participants worked through complex and practically important topics — from recognizing violence to handling children's aggression. These sessions became an important space of support, bringing together numerous specialists from across the city who work every day to protect children's psychological wellbeing and safety.

The idea for this training didn't come about by chance: since September of last year, an extremely important role has appeared in all Lviv schools — the safety coordinator. This is exactly the person students can turn to in any threatening situation, whether to share their pain in person or to send a help message through the "HOVORY" button. To support these specialists and equip them with effective, practical tools, the organizers created a series of training sessions.

The first session focused on how to recognize the first, sometimes subtle signs of violence and how to sensitively conduct an initial conversation with a child who has been harmed. The second webinar introduced participants to the trauma-informed approach in working with children, helping them understand what experiences might lie behind a child's difficult behavior. In the final session, participants discussed working with children who perpetrate violence, since they too need particular support combined with clear accountability-building.

According to Olesia Mandziuk, deputy director of the Lviv City Council's Department of Education and Culture, the introduction of safety coordinators is a significant step toward creating a genuine school environment where every student feels protected: "These webinars helped our specialists get clear action plans for the most difficult situations. We're investing in the knowledge of the people who look after safety in schools every day."

Nataliia Tarnovska, head of projects and programs in the Education direction at UCU's Centre for Child Dignity, adds that the main goal was to teach adults to look beyond a child's outward, sometimes difficult, behavior: "We talked about how to see, behind a child's behavior, their feelings and their need for support. When the adult nearby is able to notice this and truly hear the child, trust begins to form between them. And where there's trust, a conversation can begin about what's troubling the child. That's exactly how a culture of safety gradually takes shape in a school."

Participants themselves shared that the webinars were more than just theory — they became a genuine, practical guide. Teachers warmly thanked the experts for their high level of professionalism and for the opportunity to exchange real experience with colleagues, work through actual cases, and learn how to interact sensitively with teenagers in crisis states.

Today, this knowledge is available to anyone who wants to better understand children. All three webinars, featuring Yuliana Maslak, Anastasiia Shyroka, and Mariia Dubynina, are now available on the Centre's YouTube channel. They will be a reliable resource for teachers, school psychologists, and, of course, for parents who want to be a steady support for their children.

Recording of the webinar "How to Recognize Violence and Conduct an Initial Conversation with a Harmed Child"

Recording of the webinar "Trauma-Informed Approach in Working with Children"

Recording of the webinar "Trauma-Informed Approach in Working with Children"