During the working visit to Lviv region, Maryna Lazebna, Minister of Social Policy of Ukraine, together with Maksym Kozytskyi, the Head of the Lviv Regional State Administration, and representatives of various Departments, including the Department of Social Protection, visited Lviv Polytechnic.
At the meeting with Yurii Bobalo, Rector of Lviv Polytechnic, and Roman Korzh, Vice-Rector for Education and Social Development, Maryna Lazebna said:
– I express my gratitude to Lviv Polytechnic first of all for training social service specialists, and for employment of people with disabilities. Thus Polytechnic is actively developing various areas of social work that affects the growth of our country. By the way, our Ministry also employs people with disabilities, because public institutions must, first of all, set an example of such interaction and openness.
It should be noted that the direction of Social Work in Lviv Polytechnic has been developed for over twenty years.
– In 1999, together with the University of Manitoba (Winnipeg, Canada), we established the Department of Sociology and Social Work. Today this Department trains specialists in Social Work, Sociology and Social security. In the preparation of students, and in our work, we set ourselves the task – to cover these areas not with the number of specialists, but with a qualitative approach. Let’s take, for example, the Resource Center, where there are only a few employees: they do not miss a single child with vision problems – they travel all over Ukraine to share experiences, to train special education teachers to teach such children in regular classes at school... At our University there are approximately 240 students with various nosologies, and about 80 such teachers. We have the opportunity to provide comfortable conditions for study and work due to the activities of the International «Integration» Centre for Professional Partnerships, in particular «No Limits» Accessibility Services, said Rector of Lviv Polytechnic Yurii Bobalo.
Roman Korzh, Vice-Rector for Education and Social Development, paid attention to acquainting the guests with the work of all social areas at Polytechnic, organizing an excursion to Veteran Services and the Resource Center.
Tetiana Shapovalova, Director of International «Integration» Centre for Professional Partnerships and Head of the Educational Program «Social Security» and the project «Norway-Ukraine. Professional adaptation. Integration into the State System «(NUPASS) told the audience in detail about the main tasks of the Veteran Services, and acquainted them with the opportunities for retraining and social adaptation of servicemen, veterans and their family members. She paid special attention to employment opportunities. This direction is provided through cooperation with leading companies, which also help to shape educational programs in accordance with the requirements of the modern labour market.
Oksana Potymko, Head of the Resource Center for Educational Information Technology for Persons with Disabilities, told in detail about the large-scale work of the Center. Attendees had the opportunity to get acquainted with educational and didactic materials (relief-dot books, audio textbooks in DAISY format, relief drawings), sounding of textbooks for secondary and higher education, as well as to see how important audio description is for quality cartoons or movies.
In addition, Oksana Potymko told about a relatively new area of work – the organization of audio description courses for guides, museum workers, actors and showed several videos from the concert performances «Life has opened» and «Fairy Tale on white paws», where the main performers are visually impaired people. These programs are implemented jointly with the orchestra of Maria Zankovetska National Theater and the Pikkardiyska Tertsiya band.
