Archive

Russia is moving away from the state system of orphanages and is looking to place abandoned children in families. Some problems remain but it is better than the old ways, says Olga Boiko.

The Russian state care for child orphans was changed for the better during the 1990s as a result of new social policy and importing good practice from abroad. In countries with developed social welfare, social workers are more active in depriving people of their parental rights, but in Russia it is parents themselves who abandon their children.

When asked why Russia has more orphanages than any other country, the head of the department of social protection of childhood at the Russian Ministry of Education responded: "The main reason is that parents leave their children because they fail to feed and dress them."

It is important to point out that most Russians do not know that orphanages are not institutionally acceptable for solving the problem of abandoned children in many countries.

The state has indicated its intention to aid a shift from placing abandoned children in orphanages to family-based adoption. In 1991, for example, little more than 10,000 out of 59,000 "orphans" were being brought up in state institutions each year, with the rest moving in with families.

It became possible by a new law to adopt a disabled child. The adopter may also be a single parent. A disabled person may take care of children - but only those with the same disabilities. However, the biological mother has almost no chance of taking her child back, and it is felt that babies may well be ill-suited to a new family.

The social institution of children's protection considers it a priority that an adopted child finds better conditions in the new family than in a boarding school. However, there are no regulations to promote or regulate the real maintenance of children's rights.

The situation changed further towards the end of the 1990s, with the arrival of fostering.

Alternatives to orphanages and adoption existed earlier, such as family orphanages or children's villages. But foster care was not generally perceived as a professional option.

A children's village near Moscow is based on the finance and philosophy of Austrian foundation "SOS - Kinderdorf International". The "mother" (an unmarried woman, who is deemed mentally and physically healthy) and seven to eight children of various ages live together in every house there.


To what extent is this foreign experience accepted by Russians?

The director of the children's village says: "Foreign sponsors are surprised by the easiness with which Russian citizens give money to children-beggars in the subway knowing that the money will be taken away by their parents, where as they [the Russian citizens] do not want to give up 30 roubles a month [the sum of charitable contribution] for the children's village".

The director hinted that some problems remain for the children in the village when he suggested: "Better an occasionally drunk but native mother than a kind one employed by the state."

Olga Boiko is a senior lecturer in the department of social anthropology and social work at Saratov state technical university, Russia.

Background

Russia (Rossiya), the largest country in the world in terms of area, covers more than 17m sq km - about 70 times the size of the UK - and has a population of 146m. Ethnic groups: Russian 81.5%; Tatar 3.8%; Ukrainian 3%; Bashkir 0.9%; Byelorussian 0.8%; Moldavian 0.7%; other 8.1%.

Saratov is a city with a population of about 1m and is capital of the Saratovskaya oblast (region). It is 1,000 km south east of Moscow in the European part of Russia on the River Volga.

The network of social services in Saratov includes more than 130 agencies. There are 42 community centres of social services in the regional towns and districts of Saratov (compared with just 20 in 1993). The total number of social services employees in such centres is about 6,200 - including almost 5,000 social workers and specialists in social care.