Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine #966 of July 22, 2026

Who is affected: elderly people and people with disabilities among internally displaced persons; social service providers: legal entities and private entrepreneurs included in the Register of Providers; executive bodies of local councils and military administrations of settlements; the Fund for Social Protection of Persons with Disabilities, the Ministry of Social Policy, and the National Social Service.

Summary:

  • introduces the “money follows the person” principle: budget funds are transferred not to an institution, but directly to a special account of the recipient of the social service, who independently selects a provider from a published list;
  • establishes strict requirements for social service providers, aimed against the institutional model:
    • residential care — for no more than 35 people in a single facility; supported living — for no more than 8 people;
    • accommodation in single rooms or, at the recipient’s wish, in double rooms;
    • the possibility of living with pets;
    • for supported living — the possibility of independently preparing food and washing personal belongings;
  • establishes requirements for infrastructural accessibility: in cities, the place where services are provided must be located no more than 800 meters from a public transport stop, and the distance to medical, rehabilitation, and educational facilities must not exceed 5 km on foot or 20 km by transport; these requirements do not apply if the provider itself arranges transportation;
  • explicitly defines one of the project’s objectives as preventing the placement of elderly people and people with disabilities among IDPs in residential institutions;
  • establishes a formalized system for determining need through a points-based assessment of everyday functioning, with separate scales for people with physical, sensory, cognitive, and intellectual impairments;
  • allows the recipient to choose a service costing more than the maximum price, paying the difference from their own pension or state social assistance;
  • prohibits cash withdrawals and the transfer of funds from the special account to any accounts other than the provider’s account;
  • provides that, for the period of receiving residential care, the payment of living allowance for IDPs is discontinued.

What is right:

  • The requirement for single rooms, the limit of 35 people per facility and, especially, of 8 people for supported living, directly cuts off the classic institutional model, in which a person is placed in a ward of ten and deprived of privacy.
  • The possibility of living with pets may look like a minor detail, but for an elderly person who has lost their home, their city, and their social ties, a cat or a dog is often the only thing remaining from their previous life — and it was precisely the requirement to part with an animal that for years was the reason people refused to move to care facilities.
  • The “money follows the person” principle strengthens the role of the recipient: the provider competes for the recipient, rather than the recipient depending on where they have been assigned.
  • The transport accessibility requirements guarantee that a person will not be placed in a remote facility 40 kilometers from the nearest hospital.
  • The provision that the funds spent are not counted when calculating the total family income for other types of assistance protects the recipient from losing parallel payments.

What is wrong:

  • The key limitation is that the maximum number of people who may receive funds is set monthly and published on the Fund’s website. If the limit is exhausted, a person is refused participation in the project simply because of the calendar, not because of the absence of need. Formally, the authorized body is obliged to provide them with the service by other means — that is, most likely, through the very institutional system the project was meant to steer people away from.
  • The project covers only persons with legal capacity. People with disabilities who have been declared legally incapable or of limited legal capacity — that is, the most vulnerable group, most often institutionalized — are left outside it entirely. For a program that is deinstitutionalizing by design, this is a substantial narrowing.
  • All travel costs to reach the provider are placed on the person themselves. An elderly person or a person with a disability relocating, for example, from Kharkiv oblast to Lviv oblast must pay for this journey on their own, even though the choice of provider is not geographically restricted and is theoretically encouraged.
  • The assessment point thresholds are rather complex and are not accompanied by a mechanism for appealing the result: if a person scores a few points above the threshold value, they “may be refused” — wording that leaves room for arbitrariness without a clear review procedure.

Alternative solution:

  • It would be advisable to replace the mechanism of monthly limits with a waiting list with a fixed waiting period and a guarantee of receiving the service within a defined timeframe; this would give a person predictability.
  • Travel costs to reach the chosen provider should be covered from the project budget or compensated separately; otherwise the freedom to choose a provider remains theoretical for those with the fewest resources.
  • The procedure for appealing the results of the needs assessment requires explicit codification — including the right to a repeat assessment with the participation of an independent specialist.
  • The next step should be extending the project to persons declared legally incapable, with corresponding mechanisms to protect their rights, since it is precisely this group that suffers most from institutionalization.