Nestlings without a nest

The district child services happened to know that one of the residents of the family orphanage, Sasha Romashkovets, was away from home for three months. They talked to the mother-educator Dzhanina Cherep several times. Yet she never told them about what had happened. The teachers who were supposed to teach the girl individually (when she was taken from the problem family to a state orphanage at fifteen she still couldn’t read) did not say anything either.

“We were coming back from a meeting on child delinquency and I heard that Sasha hadn’t been at home for quite a while. At first I doubted this, as a couple of days earlier the director of the district center for family, child and youth social services Oksana Nikitiuk visited the house of the Cherep family and Dzhanina didn’t have any complaints. It was the end of Monday; on Tuesday we took some children from a problem family and couldn’t visit the Chereps; on Wednesday we worked on the territory of Dubyshchenska village council and decided to go to Tsuman, situated nearby, where we monitor the Kostychev family, which is deprived of parental rights for their six children. It’s always restless there, a real den. At their house we found quite a company: four drunk men, about thirty years old, and… our Sasha,” recalls the head of the Kivertsi district child services Natalia Skubii, admitting that everyone who saw the 16-year-old girl was shocked.

It was in March, she was half-dressed, wearing dirty closes and rubber slippers. Scared, Sasha was hiding her left arm; later we found out that The Day before she had tried to commit suicide by cutting her veins.

“Sasha told me that she fainted but when brought to the Tsuman hospital she regained consciousness. Later we found out why the doctors didn’t inform us like they were supposed to because Sasha is a minor. She told them that she sometimes lived at her elder married sister’s, or at her mother’s, who, unfortunately, had degraded because of alcoholism and had been deprived of parental rights. This girl attended the den nearly every night and drank wine there… Sasha says she had already tried to commit suicide, she had cut her veins and jumped from the roof. When asked why she felt miserable and what she wanted, her only answer was: ‘I’m not going to live.’ I asked her if the mother-educator knew where she was. The girl explained that she came there The Day before our visit and found a girl at the Kostychev house. Why did Dzhanina keep silent for three months, and even when Sasha periodically came home, let her go back to Tsuman? She simply kept silent and received monetary support for Sasha,” Skubii was at a loss for words.

The Day when Sasha was found she was brought to the district center. There they showed the cuts on her arms to the head of the Kivertsi District State Administration Leontii Krychkevych, photographed them, and sent the girl to the Rozhyshchi orphanage after a long discussion. She clearly cannot and will not come back to Chereps’ family orphanage.

Sasha’s dramatic story was the last straw for the district authorities, who had harbored doubts about the Chereps’ orphanage for many years. Just recently the question of their children’s education and care had been raised four times. At the last meeting the committee for the protection of children’s rights decided to terminate the Chereps’ family orphanage. It was created with a noble purpose and funded by the government. How could things go so wrong? The official information, presented by the district child services, says that in order to be able to decently replace the biological parents, the parent-educators of the Kivertsi Chereps’ family orphanage received the following funds in 2010: state social support for the children in the amount of 154,784 hryvnias and a salary of 53,295 hryvnias. In the first three months of 2011 Dzhanina Cherep received 55,149 hryvnias: 41,034 hryvnias for the children and 14,115 hryvnias for the mother-educator (4,709 hryvnias per month).

“THEY START THEIR LIFE PENNILESS”

“Have you come to pick up the costumes?”, the little girl with a schoolbag on her shoulders looks curious and friendly as I’ve been knocking at the door of the Chereps’ family orphanage for quite a while without any result. The door of the house overlooks one of the busy Kivertsi streets next to the local market.

It’s Olia, the youngest resident of this house, who has just come back from school. It turned out that the entrance to the house is through the yard. Yet Olia and I rang the doorbell for a long time and I called Dzhanina on her mobile twice when the girl finally started shouting: “Mom!” and the educator appeared in the window of the first floor. She didn’t want to see any journalists, made excuses saying that she was busy and had to cook dinner, and that one of the residents would be waiting for her in Lutsk at 2 p.m. However, we talked almost till 2 p.m. and she wasn’t in a hurry anymore. I didn’t see what Olia had for dinner as the educator took me to a remote room for a talk, holding my shoulders and not looking back at the girl. However, I wasn’t interested in the healthiness or in the casseroles’ content but in her reaction to the liquidation of the children’s house that has been a Volyn trademark for 20 years. Why did she keep silent about Sasha’s absence and her behavior, why did they leave the children unattended for a week last year went the mother-educator went to Poland with the dance group Zoretsvit and the father-educator was in Kyiv undergoing medical treatment?

She says that she trusted Sasha and hoped that she would come back. Before she went to Poland she took the children to somebody’s grandmother and the fridge in their house was full.

“Then one of the residents took the car, went to the school stadium and hit a girl. Fortunately, she wasn’t injured… Then people called me and said that the children from the Cherep house wandered around asking for food,” recalled Krychkevych.

He says that just like most Kivertsi inhabitants he didn’t know the real situation in the family orphanage as he worked in another district; he applauded Dzhanina when she was given an award during one of the regional meetings. When he became the head of the Kivertsi district he went to the Cherep house on the first week.

“Child services warned me that I had to call and ask for permission to come there. Look, it’s an orphanage financed from the state budget and I represent the state in this district. During my first visit I was shocked by the mess in the house. I visited several large families, even those having 10 children and more, and it was clean everywhere and children worked to the extent that it was possible. This family doesn’t even have a small garden — everything’s from the supermarket. The children finish school, grow up, and start life without any savings, just penniless, like nestlings thrown out of their nest… If those children had left the orphanage, they would have had 20 to 25 thousand hryvnias on their saving accounts and a social dwelling provided by the state.”

I heard that you ordered to make the income of the Cherep family orphanage equal to that of an average large family of your district.

“Yes, I did. We made the Chereps divide the heating of the ground floor and the first floor of the house they had been provided as they had enormous debts. I told them directly: ‘why do you have to heat the whole of the house at the children’s expense as you live only on the first floor, and hold meetings of the dance group Zoretsvit, attended by the town’s children, on the ground floor?’ We suggested moving that group to the District Cultural Center and allocating wardrobes there; the mayor promised to take the children to the classes for free. However, the mother-educator resists and doesn’t want to solve this problem this way.”

Now Dzhanina Cherep complains about having significant expenses linked to the house, which was nearly ruined when they received it, and about misunderstandings with the district child services. In 2009 the district authorities suggested moving the dance group from the children’s house and organizing a social hostel for the Chereps’ residents there.

“The Chereps were offered a choice between this house, a former consumer service center, and a part of the premises of the former kindergarten, which was in much better condition. They chose a house of 1,146 square meters as they claimed that they wanted to have luxurious premises for their dance theater. Who could maintain such a house?” says Skubii. “They reconstructed and decorated the premises at the expense of the state, sponsors and the children.”

“I don’t want to have a social hostel here as it’s a temporary dwelling. I want it to be a family house where my former residents could come back when they need it,” assures Dzhanina Cherep, saying that five former residents live in their family orphanage.

However, if it’s a “family house,” why do they eat separately? Moreover, once in the winter she asked her former “children” to pay 700 hryvnias per month for the heating? Skubii and Nikitiuk say that four boys had “a long and boring talk” with the educator before they were lodged in a room on the ground floor, where in the winter the temperature didn’t exceed seven to nine degrees. They weren’t even given any bedclothes. Certainly, they are already adult but they are absolutely unpractical because of the attitude of their educators. “In July 2010 the head of the district child services was addressed by K., adopted by the Chereps, and who was asking for help. She asked to protect her housing rights and to help her to get a passport after she got married as her parents strongly objected giving her the house register in Zhovtneva Street where she was registered (all the residents of the Cherep house were registered in their private house as the building where the orphanage is situated is still possessed by the town – Author) and asked her to immediately strike her name off the register and not to claim to the house.

In 2009 the former resident O. faced the same problem as she didn’t get a dwelling in the Kyiv region because the parents-educators didn’t care about it. They took all her documents and asked her to strike her name off their house register (according to the official information).

DANCES INSTEAD OF SILENCE

The head of child services says that Cherep brought a lot of children from Kyiv, as in Kivertsi it was decided not to bring any new residents to her family orphanage. And no children, no orphanage. She brought the kids without any documents. Child services collected the documents, gave them to her, but in several months they disappeared. Some of the residents left the Cherep house without passports,” emphasizes Skubii, point out the clear breach of regulations.

The local authorities think that too much attention was paid to the dance theater Zoretsvit, which really has a lot of costumes (and as far as I understood from the conversation with Olia they rent them). There are over a hundred children who dance at the same premises where the Chereps’ residents live and do their homework. Would any of the moms who actively protect Zoretsvit like to hold such dances in their house?

There are about 15 similar family orphanages in Volyn oblast. Only the Cherep house is a source of problems. It means that the idea of creating such organizations is sensible, but that greater attention should be paid to who runs such institutions.