УкраїнськаTo ensure social protection of servicemen discharged from military service is one of the areas of social policy of the state, which is carried out through the development of mechanisms to protect their legal rights. According to the adopted regulations governing the legal basis for social adaptation of servicemen, every Ukrainian professional soldier, officer or sergeant must have a civilian profession specified in the state list and a diploma that will allow him to get a job in civilian life after the expiration of the contract in civilian life keeping their “work experience” – the years of service.
According to opinion polls, social adaptation is a difficult process for most discharged servicemen: it is necessary to learn new social roles, to form adequate self-esteem, to find a new profession. It is difficult for them to navigate in the world of civilian professions and sources of information, to correlate their capabilities with the requirements of different types of work, to search for vacancies and to conclude employment contracts. All this leads to the fact that people who are able to contribute to the transformation of society, are a vulnerable part of the population. Up to 70% of retired officers have serious difficulties in choosing a civilian profession, and many of them remain unemployed for more than a year after leaving the Armed Forces.
According to statistic, the majority of servicemen that undergo the discharge and those that are discharged from military service due to redundancies constitute the economically active part of the population (belonging to the age group of 35-45 years). They have good professional training, they have experience in managing large teams, solving large-scale problems and issues of educational work, and so on. However, the vast majority of discharged military personnel have a purely military education (for example, a command profile).
The practice has shown that the employment service is not able to provide all the citizens discharged from military service with effective employment assistance. The majority (85%) of vacancies are the professions that do not correspond to the motivation, level of education and professional qualifications of reserve servicemen. Due to many unsolved socio-economic problems, this category of citizens continues to be in the social risk group of people.
The international experience of social adaptation of the servicemen transferred to the reserve shows that this problem becomes an important component of socio-economic policy in NATO and EU member states, and for this reason significant funds are given. Actually, in all foreign countries there is a legal framework and mechanisms that guarantee the servicemen both training and employment. The European education system provides a wide network of advanced training courses, which is an inherent part in the system of continuous training of the servicemen.
The natural goal of Ukraine as a one of the European states is its involvement into the European integration processes and membership in the international economic organizations and collective security structures. In such a situation, ensuring the professional employment of ex-servicemen, organizing their employment and retraining in civilian professions is a task of public importance and an urgent problem, which can be solved thanks to the united efforts of all social partners – state, education and business and international organizations.
The purpose of Khmelnytskyi Retraining and Social Adaptation Center named after M.P. Voynarenko aims to provide the services for retraining (advanced training) and employment assistance to servicemen discharged to reserve or retired, personnel servicemen, contract servicemen, personnel servicemen who are called up from the reserve for mobilization.