Myths and Reality About Social Services for Veterans

For the most part, social services do not receive due attention when it comes to providing support to particular groups of the population. When it comes to veterans, then, given that veterans’ policy is cross-sectoral, one can come across certain claims that need to be refuted or supported with additional evidence.

Myth 1: All veterans need social services

Reality: a social service is assistance that makes it possible to prevent the emergence of difficult life circumstances, to overcome them or to reduce their negative consequences for a person who has found themselves in them. A social service is not conditioned on a particular status.

Difficult life circumstances are circumstances that negatively affect a person’s life and health and that the person cannot overcome on their own. The list of difficult life circumstances is not exhaustive. They include, for example, partial or complete loss of mobility; incurable diseases and diseases requiring long-term treatment; disability; harm caused by military (combat) actions, and others.

As can be seen, veteran status is not among the difficult life circumstances. Thus, the provision of a social service is conditioned not by status, but by a particular difficult situation that a person cannot overcome on their own. That is, not all veterans, not all people with disabilities or elderly people, and so on, are in difficult life circumstances and, accordingly, need support in the form of social services.

Evidence of this claim can be the social service of social adaptation of war veterans and their family members, introduced in 2024. Although this was not stated directly, the service was presented as one provided by the very fact of having veteran status. The service consists of two parts: a stay with the family at a recreational facility for 7 to 14 days, and then individual adaptation of the veteran.

The service was difficult to implement, and it is unknown whether it was introduced on the basis of an analysis of the needs of veterans and their family members. Therefore, as of July 2025, it had covered only 1,300 people out of one and a half million veterans at that time. There is no newer data.

Thus, providing a social service on condition of having a certain status – in this case, veteran status – not only contradicts the very approach to social services, but may also contribute to the stigmatisation of a particular group as exclusively vulnerable. At the same time, whether veterans have a need for a special social service not covered by the existing list of such services requires methodologically sound research.

Myth 2: A specialist in support of veterans and demobilised persons is a social worker

Reality: a specialist in support of veterans and demobilised persons (VSS) and a social worker perform different, although interrelated, functions.

A VSS accompanies and advises veterans in the community; informs and advises them about their rights, benefits and state guarantees, provides support, identifies needs and, if necessary, helps them obtain social services.

A social worker assesses a veteran’s needs for social services and organises the provision of the relevant social service. If necessary, the social worker may involve a VSS in the process of providing such a service.

To delimit the functions of VSS and social workers, the Ministry of Veterans Affairs and the Ministry of Social Policy issued a joint order in October 2025, which defined the Procedure for Interaction of the Entities Supporting War Veterans, Their Family Members and Other Categories of Persons in Carrying Out Support Measures in Terms of Providing Social Services.

At the same time, it should be noted that both in practice and in the Order itself, it is envisaged that a VSS provides information, consultation and support to veterans. Such actions belong to the list of social services, so the myth did not arise without reason, and the functions of VSS need further clarification.

Myth 3: Separate long-term care social services need to be created for veterans

Reality: care social services already exist in Ukraine: home care, residential care and supported living. The problem lies in the limited availability and capacity of the existing system, in which communities are responsible for providing such services.

The main barriers are: the complexity and high cost of organising and providing care services; a shortage of qualified staff; insufficient institutional and financial capacity of communities; and weak integration of the medical and social components of care.

At present there is no data that would confirm that home care, residential care and supported living do not meet veterans’ care needs. Moreover, introducing and implementing a new care service based solely on status would run into the same systemic barriers described above.

Therefore, systemic problems require systemic solutions. It seems that introducing free long-term medical care for veterans (a similar long-term nursing care service was previously introduced for internally displaced persons) alleviates the problem but does not solve it.

Experience with implementing a similar service has shown that, firstly, it is difficult to introduce because of the limited number of medical institutions and, secondly, the problem does not go away – after the medical institution one still has to look for care social services that the community does not provide.

An interim solution, which again does not resolve the systemic problem in the area of responsibility of the Ministry of Social Policy, could be to provide state support to communities specifically to ensure care services for veterans.

Conclusion

All these myths did not arise by chance. As noted at the beginning, one of the reasons is the cross-sectoral nature of veterans’ policy, where in this case the Ministry of Social Policy and the National Social Service are responsible for providing social services at the national level. The attempts of the Ministry of Veterans Affairs to solve complex problems with separate “veteran” instruments are understandable, but, based on practical experience, can only temporarily alleviate the problem and will not remove the systemic barriers. Therefore, it is necessary to look for joint solutions for everyone who needs social services. This, in turn, will also help remove obstacles to access to social services for veterans.

Source: LB.ua (lb.ua), blog of Tetiana Luzan, https://lb.ua/blog/tetiana_luzan/779040_mifi_y_realnist_pro_sotsialni.html