Machine childhood

Help saving life help

Masha was five when she was taken from the family. Tanya and Nadia - eight and 14. Parents never came to their orphanage, but they did not wait for anyone. Closed, silent, wary. Masha did not talk at all, teachers could not understand - this is a consequence of a psychological trauma or organic brain damage. Diagnosis in many orphanages is poorly carried out. Masha put a delay in psycho-emotional development, and when candidates for adoptive parents appeared, they were warned: "The girl may never speak."

The sisters fell into a good family. Their new parents believed that everything can be cured with love. A year later, it became clear that there was little love alone. Masha still did not speak, Tanya was very closed, Nadia woke up at night with a scream, she was tormented by bad dreams. At school, they had no friends, it was difficult to converge with new people. It happened that family friends would come to visit, and the children seem to not see and do not hear them.

The sisters were afraid to go out, even to the store. They left the house only with my mother. They had to buy them a dog with which they went everywhere. A year later, parents turned for help. By this time, the Orenburg Foundation "Preserving Life" had been working with foster families and their "difficult" children for several years. “Our psychologist drew attention to the fact that the girl’s houses behave naturally,” says the director of the Foundation Anna Interova. - They were attached to their foster parents. But as soon as they went beyond their house, high anxiety and tension appeared. Everywhere they were forced to emotionally defend themselves, build fences. All their energy went to this, the children were tired. "

A year later, it became clear that there was little love alone. Masha still did not say

The foster parents knew that the girls grew up in a dysfunctional family, but they could not assume what they had to go through. In the very first months of the work of a psychologist and art therapist with children, the details of their past life began to be clarified. To tell about these details, we had to change not only the names and age of the children, but also some details of this story.

“Parents are drug addicts, in the house all the time strangers who came for a dose,” says Anna Mezhov. - The girls were forced to stand “on a stir” while parents prepared drug mixtures. They were beaten. Nadia often recalls that her father, when he beat her on the head, was swearing and threatened to "kill a bitch." When the money ended, and there was nothing to prepare drugs from, parents passed the girls “for rent” to their friends. This went on until the police covered the stash, and the children were not taken to the shelter. "

Psychologists still do not know all aspects of their life, therapy continues, the girls gradually open the doors to their past. But it was possible to find out the reason for their anxiety, terrible dreams and alarms with other people - the sisters were afraid that biological parents would see them in the city and return back. They were afraid that friends of biological parents would see them and report. They were afraid to be in the blood family again. In safety, they felt only in the apartment of the foster parents.

“Improvements began after a couple of months of the work of psychologists,” says Anna Interova. - Masha began to speak - so far with difficulty, with big mistakes, but she wanted to share her experiences. And in the third month of therapy, they fell on the first shift in our rehabilitation camp. The change lasts only five days, but during this time we saw other children. They went beyond the camp without fear, walked around the fields, they relaxed, became more free. And most importantly - my mother saw it. She realized that the children are actually not the same as she saw them at home, and that fear was just disturbed by them. ”

The rehabilitation camp conducted by the Fund is a completely unique phenomenon. A year ago, I was in Orenburg and talked with a family raising five adopted children. Children from different families, but with a similar past: drunk parents, poverty, beatings. One of the daughters experienced sexual harassment from the father. In the rehabilitation program of the fund, they were more than two years, once they visited a rehabilitation camp. When I came to visit them, they told me all evening about the "Summer Camp with my mother." About the pool and the forest, about the fire and songs, about fairy tales before bedtime, about the group where everyone is lying on the floor on the rugs and chatting with a psychologist, and about the mother, which was always there.

Their adoptive mother Svetlana told me that she looked at her children with different eyes: “I spent five days with them, I did not have to cook, run on business, drive everyone into school gardens. Together we walked, sang songs, talked with a psychologist, with other parents and other children. And then all year then we remembered this vacation, he fastened our family, gave us some important story. ”

Anna Interova says that in the rehabilitation camp, families fall into the small world, where everyone is close to each other, because they have similar problems, and therefore do not defend themselves from anyone. And if children stop defending themselves, it means that they perceive parents, psychologists, and the world around him. The psychologist in the camp sees the child during the day, and not two hours a week - and understands him better. In groups of psychological unloading, parents communicate with each other and understand that they are not alone, that their problems are not the most terrible, and that there is always a way out. Children communicate in their groups under the control of a psychologist: someone, for example, begins to tell a terrible fairy tale, and the rest suggest the development of the plot, making it not terrible, but cheerful-the child sees the transformation of his negative emotions into positive and ceases to be afraid.

Every year, the fund collects money for a rehabilitation camp to help all the families who need it. Last year, interior received about 100 applications from different Russian regions - the word of mouth to the maternal communities on the work of Orenburg specialists with “difficult” adoptive children, and it turned out that almost no one was conducting such work in Russia. The child falls into the foster family from the zone of dysfunction with the whole baggage of the experience, humiliation and fear, and the family is often not ready to help him, because there is no experience and competence.

Every year, the fund collects money for a rehabilitation camp to help all the families who need it

“Many adoptive parents do not turn to the guardianship authorities for help,” explains Anna Interova, “they are afraid. They tell the guardianship authorities that the child is doing well, and then they come to us and say how bad everything is. This, of course, is wrong, but we cannot force a person to go to officials for help if he himself does not want it. ”

In most regions, the guardianship and trusteeship bodies can send a family to a rehabilitation center (if it is in this village) or to a psychologist to the clinic (with a recording for a month in advance), but in this case, the guardianship authorities receive a signal that the foster family does not cope, this threatens with increased attention from their part, and in Russia, the family is very afraid of close attention of the state with its post -Soviet syndrome. Therefore, most families prefer to hide their difficulties from the guardianship authorities.

There are still psychologists in schools and kindergartens, but they lack knowledge. They often associate the behavioral problems of the child with the “genes”, and not with the experienced injuries. Often parents hear: "He is your adoptive, but what did you want?" In schools, in general, they are not yet ready to accept children with features, says Anna Interova. “The child, due to the psychological trauma, often cannot behave like the rest of the children, he fights, screams, and others do not like this. And society says: take it to home schooling, to a correctional school or anywhere so that it does not bother us. Society expels the child. The mechanisms are needed for its rehabilitation so that it does not grow out, so as not to spend his whole life an outcast. But there are no mechanisms. ”

Such a mechanism is possible within the framework of government decree No. 481, which from September 1, 2015 reforms the system of orphanages and boarding schools. It says that children should live in the family - blood or reception - and guardianship authorities should do everything in their power to exercise the child’s right to the family. And the stay in the orphanage is temporary. If the reform takes place, there will be fewer children in institutions, and on the liberated area of the orphan or boarding school you can open a rehabilitation center for adoptive and blood children in the area.

This would allow you to stop the influx of children in orphanages and simplified the lives of foster families. But while this is in dreams, the reform is just beginning, and children need help right now.
In addition, reform may not affect the reduction of crimes committed by adults against children. So, help for children who survived violence will always be needed.

Moreover, such assistance needs 80% of foster families, because almost every adoptive child has experienced a psychological or psychophysical trauma.

In 2015, the Investigative Committee investigated almost nineteen and a half thousand crimes committed against children. Of these, 484 killings, 1645 rape, more than 5300 facts of violent acts of a sexual nature. Almost ten and a half thousand criminal cases were sent to the courts, which is 25% more than in 2014.

Every sixth child becomes an object of criminal encroachment on the part of the persons close to him. In 2015, almost 12 thousand children were injured from violent crimes, of which 1900 became victims of the family circle.

Orenburg - in fourth place in Russia in terms of the number of crimes against children. “We have a hot telephone line“ The child is in danger ” - but no one knows about it, therefore they are typed at 02 habit, and the district police officer comes the next day. Sometimes it is too late, ”says Interova.

Children are tied to a battery for a day. They are sealed with adhesive tape so that they do not interfere with their parents to have fun. They are binded by arms and legs. They beat them. They are raped. Before their eyes, they beat and kill relatives. Anna Interova still remembers the child, in front of which his father stabbed his mother. The boy was taken care of a grandmother, he went to rehabilitation for a psychologist and art therapist for two years. He became better, he was removed from therapy. Once, his grandmother called the interior and said: “Anna, such happiness, our dad died in prison, now we have nothing to fear.”

There are extremely few specialists who can work with children's injury - especially in the field of social services. Today, the Foundation "Preserving Life" holds training seminars for parents, psychologists, specialists of guardianship and trusteeship bodies, orphanages. The more parents will know how to help the child, the less children will return to orphanages. And the less people will grow up who hate this world for his brutal handling of them.

During the year, the fund plans to hold a rehabilitation camp for 100 children who have survived the injury. Consultations of psychologists and art therapist will receive about 500 more children. The fund intends to release an information brochure for help from children who have survived the abuse, which will indicate the telephone of the hotline “The child in danger”.

In order for this plan for a year to be a success, you need to collect 1,900,040 rubles. Childhood cannot be bought, and he has no price. But sometimes we can help him return.