After refusal of payments, adoptive parents from Kaliningrad handed over seven children to guardianship authorities

A couple from Kaliningrad, having moved to Moscow, gave seven adopted children to the guardianship authorities. The city authorities refused to pay them wages, taking into account established social benefits. This was reported by TASS with reference to Vadim Menshov, director of the Center for Promotion of Family Education “Our Home”, member of the Board of Trustees under the Government of the Russian Federation.

According to the director of the center, the Moscow authorities refused to “register a “foster family” and pay them a salary” as “nonresidents.” Menshov said that in Kaliningrad, a family received payments in the amount of 18 thousand rubles per month per child, while remuneration for adoptive parents in Moscow reaches 85 thousand rubles per month per child.

“Last Friday, parents returned seven children ranging in age from three to 12 years old. The guardianship authorities asked the parents to sign a document stating that they had removed the children, but the parents refused to sign and stated that they were returning the children themselves,” Menshov said.

The head of the Moscow social protection department, Vladimir Petrosyan, told TASS that there are “a lot of such cases.” He explained the authorities’ refusal by the need to provide housing for adopted children after their 18th birthday.

“They came from the regions to Moscow, why should Moscow keep them here? Seven children, to whom in five years I had to give seven apartments in Moscow. Why is this? - Petrosyan emphasized.

The head of the Our Home center has already discussed the current situation with the return of seven children with Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Government Olga Golodets. According to Menshov, they agreed with the Deputy Prime Minister to send her a letter with several proposals to resolve this situation.

At the beginning of January, the Izvestia newspaper wrote that the monthly income of unemployed parents from Moscow, who took three disabled children into their family, was 253 thousand rubles. In the regions, such a family receives four times less money. In response to this, experts in the field of social orphanhood called on not to accuse foster families of self-interest and not to jeopardize the state’s plans for the family placement of orphans.

In the fall of 2016, Children's Ombudsman Anna Kuznetsova reported that in Russia the number of orphans had decreased to 61 thousand people. According to her, during the program for placing orphans in families, the number of orphans in the country has halved, and the highest rates are in Chechnya and Ingushetia, where there is not a single child in orphanages.

Despite the positive dynamics in general, there are regions in which there are problems with the adoption of orphans: the Chelyabinsk region, where 2,908 orphans are kept in orphanages, the Irkutsk region with 2,785 children, the Krasnoyarsk Territory (2,717 people), the Primorsky Territory (2,617) and the Kemerovo region ( 2517).

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets cited similar statistics in November. According to her, now many orphans left without care live with serious illnesses, but society’s attitude towards such children is noticeably changing. The Deputy Prime Minister emphasized that children with health problems are increasingly being taken into families, and this change must be supported.

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