THE SOCIALIZATION OF CHILDREN LACKING PARENTAL SUPERVISION IN THE SAMARA REGION

By T.N. Shtein and T. Iu. Klimeshova

EDITOR’S SUMMARY

In the 1990’s, the early post-Soviet years, the leadership of Sarama region decided to focus attention and resources on the problems of homeless children, invalid children, reproductive health, infant mortality, and providing services to families and children.

By now there is a government institutional structure for the above purposes in all of the region’s 49 municipal administrations, including family centers which cooperate with the Russian Association for “Family Planning,” a non-governmental organization. Some 90,000 families with children are now being served in some way or other by this complex of institutions.

The article gives a breakdown of the different categories of children needing help: those abandoned at birth, those whose parents are dead or cannot be located, those with parents in prison or with parents who have been partially or wholly deprived of parental rights, etc.

In the Soviet period, orphaned and homeless children were placed in orphanages, special boarding schools and other institutions, all of which deprived children of their right to live and be brought up in a family environment, according to the principles of the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by the USSR in 1990.

Now the policy in Samara region is to place children whenever possible in foster families. As of January 1, 2003, there were 2076 children in 1501 foster families. Another 13,700 children were in “conditions substituting for” or replacing the family, and 2,500 children were in government institutional settings.

The foster families are carefully chosen – not all applicants pass the test – and are given 10 days of training, then undergo an “adaptation period” and are monitored by a commission that together with the family works out a program of rehabilitation and services to be coordinated by a social worker from the local family center.

The article reports the early results of the foster family experience – the kinds of problems that have emerged and how they can be addressed. Foster parents sometimes automatically apply the same approaches to foster children as they used with their own children; they expect positive results too quickly; they place too much responsibility on their own oldest child to look after the foster child; one or both foster parents does not develop enough emotional empathy with the foster child. And so on.

The authors conclude: “We know our mistakes and we will correct them. And we believe that we’ll succeed in arranging things for the benefit of these children who, as we all understand, are not alien to us”.