Redesigning care during wartime: SOFT tulip team visits Zakarpattia care institutions in July 2026

Can you redesign an entire care system during a war? This week in Ukraine, that’s exactly what we’re working on.

For three days, experts from the Netherlands joined colleagues in Ukraine’s Zakarpattia region to tackle one of the biggest challenges in social care: moving away from institutional care towards recovery-oriented, community-based support.

For SOFT tulip it was the continuation of years of partnership built on a belief that every person deserves the opportunity to recover, participate, and live with dignity.

Together with our long-standing partners from Parnassia Groep and GGZ Noord-Holland-Noord , we worked alongside the Department of Social Protection of the Zakarpattia Regional Administration and professionals from regional care institutions to explore what real transformation looks like.

Over three intensive days, we focused on:

➡️ Transforming residential institutions into modern rehabilitation and support centres.

➡️ Building financially sustainable care organisations that can thrive under Ukraine’s evolving legal framework.

➡️ Investing in people by strengthening the skills of managers, psychologists, nurses, social workers, and care professionals.

One milestone of this visit was the completion of the Active Recovery Triad (ART) training programme. After months of online learning, professionals from three residential care institutions came together for practical workshops in Turia Remeta Psychoneurological Boarding Institution, Mukachevo Children’s Boarding Institution and Mukachevo Psychoneurological Boarding Institution.

ART methodology represents a different philosophy of care: one that focuses on people’s strengths, recovery, autonomy, and meaningful participation in society instead of simply managing illness or disability.

For us, this is what international cooperation should look like: not short-term missions, but working side by side, sharing expertise, adapting international best practices to the Ukrainian context, and creating lasting systemic change together.

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