The start of “children’s” reform

The government of Ukraine is taking the first steps to reform the children’s system of care. By May 2006 a state department of adoptions and children’s rights protection will be set up within the framework of Ukraine’s Ministry of Family, Youth, and Sports. Minister Yuriy Pavlenko made this announcement at a press conference in Kyiv. He noted that this government organ will replace the Children’s Adoption Center, which currently operates under the aegis of the Ministry of Education and Science. Appropriate changes have been made to the Family Code.

According to the minister, there are plans to transfer responsibilities connected with adoption questions on the local level from adoption departments and administrations to juvenile services. Pavlenko also announced that as of April 4, juvenile services on all levels will handle all matters pertaining to the adoption of children, and placing them in care in home-style institutions and foster families. The minister pointed out that the main objective of the newly established agency will be the protection of children’s rights, ForUm reported.

The creation of this department will help implement the right of every minor to be raised in a family, step up the national adoption process, regulate intergovernmental adoption procedures, improve cooperation with consulates and embassies, and establish the legal status of orphans and homeless children in a timely fashion. Pavlenko is convinced that this department will be instrumental in enhancing the responsibility of local and central executive authorities in placing orphans and children deprived of parental care in family-type programs, and in upgrading the current legislation.

“The task of this body is to unite all functions and assume responsibility for the entire period of the development and rearing of orphans,” the minister said.

He noted that the Children’s Adoption Center at the Ministry of Education will retain adoption functions for the next three months, while the new body is being set up. During this period the center must complete all adoption proceedings initiated earlier and forward the databases on adopted children and other pertinent documentation to the department. Pavlenko said that this relates primarily to the adoption of Ukrainian children by foreigners. “This is a question not of foreign nationals but Ukrainian children, who have already begun to regard these people as their parents, since this procedure takes about a year and a half,” said Pavlenko.

Earlier, President Yushchenko promised that 2006 will be the Year of the Child in Ukraine and instructed the Ministry of Finance to introduce an essentially new pattern of financing children in need of government care from the beginning of this year. In essence, the plan is: money goes after children, not the other way around. In other words, money will be allocated for each individual orphan. “Independently of the status of a child requiring care, from 2006 we are providing each child with two subsistence minimums plus 300 hryvnias for the parents of each child,” the president declared late last year at the all- Ukraine conference “With Love and Care for Children”, adding: “The financial service should implement the following requirement: from January 2006 money must truly follow the child, and this is a separate instruction for the Ministry of Finance: to develop this principally new pattern as of next January, without any experimentions.” At the same time the president noted that these funds “should be used to change the quality” of the system of child care: “We have a Soviet structure that will not bring any results, no matter how much we invest in boarding schools.”

Like many experts, the president believes that Ukraine requires a serious reform of the system of care, the beginnings of which resides in the creation of a new body under the aegis of the youth ministry, and changes to the system of financing. The top priorities of this reform are families in crisis, support for families that have adopted children, and family-type institutions.

Last year saw a total of 22,000 more children in Ukraine, who need placements. Guardians took only half of them, while 860 children were adopted in Ukraine and 827 by foreigners.