Improving the Parentally Deprived Children’s Quality of Life in Ukraine (Based on the British Experi...

N.V. Martovytska

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Improving the Parentally Deprived Children’s Quality of Life in Ukraine (Based on the British Experience)

N.V. Martovytska

Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy, Foreign Language Department, Bohdan Khmelnitsky National University at Cherkasy, Ukraine

Abstract

The thesis highlights social protection of orphans and children deprived of parental care in and in . It is stated that social policy in is aimed at searching effective forms of placements for orphans and children deprived of parental care. Adoption, family care, foster care and with biological family reunion are supported by current British social policy. Classification of British foster families based on the principles of time, the category of addressees, content and conditions of receiving are developed. The objective possibility of British social protection experience of orphans and children deprived of parental care transformation to Ukrainian welfare system is defined and substantiated. The comparative analysis of basic mechanisms of social protection of orphans and children deprived of parental care in the and is explored. The implementation of some progressive aspects of orphans and children deprived of parental care welfare in the into social and educational work of is offered. The following aspects of child welfare system may be implemented in Ukraine: different types of family forms of accommodation (according to the needs of a child), children hearing system, motivation of foster families creation and kinds of foster parents support.

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Cite this article:

  • Martovytska, N.V.. "Improving the Parentally Deprived Children’s Quality of Life in Ukraine (Based on the British Experience)." American Journal of Educational Research 2.12B (2014): 70-77.
  • Martovytska, N. (2014). Improving the Parentally Deprived Children’s Quality of Life in Ukraine (Based on the British Experience). American Journal of Educational Research, 2(12B), 70-77.
  • Martovytska, N.V.. "Improving the Parentally Deprived Children’s Quality of Life in Ukraine (Based on the British Experience)." American Journal of Educational Research 2, no. 12B (2014): 70-77.

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1. Introduction

One of the major tasks today is to improve the situation of children in the society. A special place in solving this problem is the creation of adequate conditions to protect the rights of every child. Changes which are now taking place in the world and in , have led to the increasing number of orphans and children deprived of parental care. In particular, according to official data, in 2013 there were 94,000 children of such category. A large number of orphans and children deprived of parental care in residential institutions, educational system of which does not create the necessary conditions to prepare them for independent life.

In this regard the problem of improving the social security and protection of orphans and children deprived of parental care in Ukraine became urgent. It causes its reconsideration and reorganization, which will promote to create the conditions for successful entry of these children into society.

Category orphans and children deprived of parental care require special attention. Britain is one of the countries where social work and social security system has a 100-year history. Nevertheless, the number of children who need of care is rather large and growing each year both in Ukraine and in the UK. This problem requires a thorough study and analysis, with further practical implementation of existing achievements.

2. Methodology

This study is naturally comparatively analysis. Taking into account mentioned aspects, the introduction of comparative method (comparative analysis), the study of social protection and assistance to orphans and children deprived of parental care in the UK will be efficient and effective for implementation to the practice of the Ukrainian social and educational work with orphans and children deprived of parental care.

2.1. Objectives of the Study

The main objective of this study is to examine the nature and characteristics of social protection of orphans and children deprived of parental care in the UK and substantiate the necessary of transformation theory and practice of social and educational work in Ukraine on the basis of the usage of British orphans and children deprived of parental care welfare system achievements.

A set of objective that will govern this study is stated bellow:

1. Determine the nature of the basic concepts of research orphan child and children deprived of parental care in Ukraine and the United Kingdom.

2. Identify effective forms of these children placement in the UK.

3. Find out the types of placements for orphans and children deprived of parental care in Ukraine and compare them with the existing ones in British social protection system.

4. Identify and justify the possible directions of children’s welfare in Ukraine transformation, taking into account social protection of orphans and children deprived of parental care achievements in the UK.

3. The System of Social Care of Orphans and Parentally Deprived Children Improvement in Ukraine

Today there is an urgent need for scientific problem analysis, comparison, systematization of theoretical and practical issues to solve a number of contradictions: between the growing number of orphans and parentally deprived children and lack in modern scientific theory and practice proved effective ways of this phenomena localization; the objective need for orphans and children deprived of parental care social protection and imperfection of such children social security system; the necessity to train social and pedagogical specialists for implementation of these children social welfare and the lack of theoretical, methodological and scientific methods of such training.

In Ukraine there are about 8000 children left without parental care every year due to the lessening the value of the family, difficult life circumstances, irresponsibility of parents to fulfill their responsibilities for children, drug and alcohol abuse, child abuse. In a large number of orphans and children deprived of parental care stay in residential institutions, educational system of which does not create the necessary conditions to prepare them for independent life. Insufficiently effective are the results from the interaction between executive power and civil society organizations engaged in the children's rights protection, there are no effective programs for preventing child orphanhood, social protection and support for children left without parental care.

3.1. The Category of Orphaned Children and Parentally Deprived Children in Ukrainian and British Social Welfare System

Taking into consideration social protection in our work, we take into account the aspects relating to orphans and parentally deprived children. Orphan, according to the Law of Ukraine "On Child Protection" are those "whose parents died or were killed" [22]. The Law of Ukraine "On Providing Organizational and Legal Conditions of Social Protection for Orphans and children deprived of parental care" gives the following definition of children deprived of parental care - a child who "was left without parental care due to the deprivation of their parental rights, taking the children from parents without parental rights deprivation, recognition of parents to be missed or incapable, announcing them to be dead, being taken to prison, searching them by law enforcement agencies, lack of information about their location, parents long-term illness that prevents them to perform their parental responsibilities. Also, this status applies to the children being left, whose parents are unknown, children being refused of by their parents, and homeless children "[80].

According to the British legal documents, the term "orphan child" is defined as the one whose parents- guardians were killed or died [6]. British social work dictionary, defines an orphan as “a child who has no parent or guardian” [6]. Merriam-Webster dictionary says that an orphan is “a child who does not have one or both parents because of their death” [19].

So, in general in the British legislation the orphanhood is determined by the criterion of parents’ absence (death).

Children deprived of parental care in British scientific literature are defined as "children who are temporarily or permanently live with or separately from their parents. These children are deprived of care and protection, which are usually provided by parents as primary carers. To this the following groups of children may be involved: who ran away from home; who were forced to leave the house due to certain reason; children who have been removed from the family by governmental bodies or agencies; children who were separated from their parents due to extreme life situation [23, 29].

The term "children deprived of parental care" is used in foreign scientific literature in the context of "transferring the child to the care of the judicial" authority or "parental rights deprivation" and is determined by court [25].

Thus, according to the British law and scientific literature, children deprived of parental care can have this status temporarily (due to temporary living separately from parents). In the Ukrainian sense, these are children who have been deprived of parental care as a result of inappropriate upbringing and care by their parents. Common features in the understanding of this phenomenon both in the British and Ukrainian society – are children being left by their parents, or they can not raise a child by themselves.

In our opinion, the definition of "children deprived of parental care" (given by British scientists) as those who are temporarily may not live with his family, points to the fact that returning a child to his birth family is possible. This indicates understanding the importance of bringing up children in their biological families.

In Ukrainian society there is the concept of "social orphans", which has something in common with "children deprived of parental care." This term is indicated by the existence of children’s alive parents who do not raise a child properly. To this category we include homeless, neglected children, but the children of the category "social orphans" are not confirmed by law in Ukraine.

4. Searching the Effective Forms of Orphans’ and Parentally Deprived Children as an Important Social Welfare Element

Great Britain has overcome historical stages of social protection of children development, till society has realized the importance and necessity of this process and started to provide children protection and their rights as enjoying full rights members of society.

Modern scientists during their research all over the world are guided by scientific standards that are relevant to all mankind. In pedagogical science there always existed two opposite tendencies – on national traditions in education preservation and development, on the convergence of world models of science and education [30].

Views of the UK scholars on the investigated phenomenon of orphans and children deprived of parental care social protection, and the peculiarities of its system makes it possible to define common and different in theory of social and pedagogical science and educational research on the topic, to distinguish progressive ideas and achievements that can be offered for implementation use in Ukrainian social welfare system.

In our opinion, one of the child welfare effectiveness indicators is the existence of different forms of care for orphans and children deprived of parental care according to their needs, as it exists in the UK.

In Ukraine during the Soviet regime the priority forms of orphans’ and children deprived of parental care placements were different types of boarding schools that were funded by the state.

The turning point in the field of child welfare has become the second half of the XX century after the adoption and ratification of the UN Convention of Children Rights, which stated that the best environment for the development of the child is the family which will prepare the child for independent life, provide the best social and pedagogical education. It was the late 90-ies of XX century when the family care including new interpretations were revived, improved and became ready for development and transformation. Foster families and family-type arrangements were created [4].

This leads to searching effective elements of orphans’ and children deprived of parental care social protection and appealing to the foreign countries experience.

4.1. Causes of the Children Being Placed into Institutional Care Establishments

Among the main reasons why children are being placed into care institutions in , scholars identified excessive usage of alcohol by parents, family financial distress and neglect (Table 1). The main reason why children are being placed in institutional placements in the UK is neglect, emotional and physical violence (Table 1).

Table 1. Causes of the Children Being Placed into Institutional Care Establishments or in Foster Families in Ukraine and Great Britain (%)

In our opinion, country economic instability is another factor that influences the increasing number of social orphans and children deprived of parental care. Therefore, domestic [15, 26] and foreign [13, 14, 24] scholars pay attention to the quality of social and educational support for these children, search mechanisms to improve the system of social child protection.

Thus, such situation requires finding new priorities, forms of social protection of orphans and children deprived of parental care. One of them we believe the study and implementation the British experience of social protection of these categories of children.

4.2. The State's Role of Orphans’ and Parentally Deprived Children Social Protection

Protection of orphans and children deprived of parental care, the legislation of . Child Protection in is carried out through the guardianship and care services for children, centers of social services for family, children and youth according to the law. The state protects children from physical or mental violence, exploitation, involvement into criminal activity, etc. [5]. In the UK, social protection of orphans and children deprived of parental care is carried out at three levels of the system: by the central government, by government agencies and by local government. The body which deals with this problem in is the Ministry of Health. It is competent in making decisions as to adoption of orphans and children deprived of parental care. On the local level, the Committee of children protection supervises supports and protects and decides whether there is the need of appropriate services.

Ukrainian state improves the system of institutional care, introduces preventive measures to avoid orphanhood. In 2012 the President of Ukraine signed a Decree (from October 22, 2012 № 609/2012) "National Strategy of Child Orphanhood Prevention in the period up to 2020" [1].

The strategy was developed and based on the analysis and results being achieved in the area of children and families with children social protection. The main goal of the strategy is to prevent child orphanhood by providing qualified services to families with children in need; implementation of obligatory support of families where the parents violated the rights of the child; creation and implementation of new social technologies aimed at preventing cases of removing the child from the parents without parental rights deprivation; introduction of social services for parents with children in institutions of care in order to family reunion.

This strategy will reduce the number of orphans and children deprived of parental care who are educated in institutional establishments; ensure the provision of qualified services to children and families with children who are in difficult circumstances; ensure effective activity of professionals working with families, children and youth to identify the families who are in difficult circumstances on early stage [1].

A significant difference in the role of providing social services in Ukraine, in our opinion, is that social workers in the Ukrainian system of social protection do not provide enough qualified social protection. It may be explained by the fact that one social worker in Ukraine deals with many problem families simultaneously. This leads to a lack of individual approach to each family, their problems and thus to inefficient cooperation and support. In Britain, a social worker deals with a small number of families (10-15) what gives to the specialist an opportunity to study the needs of the family thoroughly and to implement individual approach to solve them.

One of the objectives as for the category of orphans is the social protection of orphans and children deprived of parental care: reformation the institutions of care for these children; standards development of the system of institutions for orphans and parentally deprived children; development and implementation of a mechanism to ensure orphans and children deprived of parental care with quality and sufficient food, clothing and others. Important objectives of the program, which were gradually implemented, is the development of family-based care for orphans and children deprived of parental care; protecting the rights of children being in institutions for orphans and children deprived of parental care [2].

The analysis of given above gives reason to believe that all program areas aimed at increasing the number of foster families, foster care homes, adoption, reducing the number of orphans and children deprived of parental care who are educated in institutions, to facilitate the adaptation of children to independent living .

Changes in the number of orphans and children deprived of parental care in Ukraine are constantly changing. Thus, according to the Ministry of Ukraine for Family, Youth and Sport in 2005, there were 97.8 thousand of such children. Orphaned children and children deprived of parental care in 2006 were 102.9 thousand in number, 2007 - 102.9 thousand, in 2008 - 103.5 thousand, in 2009 - 100.8 thousand, in 2010 - 98.1 thousand [3].

Drawing parallels with the UK, we observe the tendency of increasing the number of children who need the arrangement because of the risk of becoming orphans or being deprived of parental care. This pattern relates to all parts of the country (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland). For example, in Scotland, in 2005 there were 12 185 thousand. Among these children with children in 2006 - 12 982 thousand., In 2007 - 14 060 thousand., In 2008 - 14 888 thousand., In 2009 - 15 287 thousand., in 2010 - 15 892 thousand [28].

According to these data, the number of orphans and children deprived of parental care in Ukraine is quite large, but it has a tendency to decrease comparing to previous years. This is due to the economic crisis the country that took place at that time. We believe that another cause of increasing the number of children placed in state care institutions was social orphanhood due cause for benefits provided by the state for care of children under the age of three. After receiving payment, parents leave their children in institutions, explaining their decision to economic incapability to child support, difficult circumstances, family problems (alcohol abuse, drug addiction, etc..).

As for Great Britain, in our opinion, this indicator depicts the number of children in need (due to orphanage or deprivation of parental rights) explaining the strictness requirements for parents who raise children and following for their rights. However, the country is taking effective measures to placement of the mentioned categories of children in family-based care and many of them return to their biological families.

4.3. Efficiency of Placements for Orphans and Parentally Deprived Children in Ukraine and Great Britain

Any kind of arrangement for orphans and children deprived of parental care has its advantages and disadvantages. The modern Ukrainian society is under the process of change in all sectors, including social sphere. From our point of view, if we extrapolate world achievements (one of these elements is the British social security system for category of children being into consideration) practices into social and educational work of Ukraine: to increase professional skills of foster carers, to teach adoptive parents to work with teenagers, to pay for this kind of work a proper payment, - it will have positive and effective results [16, 31].

4.4. The Need to Transform the Institutional Forms of Placement for Orphans and Parentally Deprived Children in Ukraine

The main forms of placements for orphans and children deprived of parental care in Ukraine are boarding schools of various types and submission, adoption, guardianship (care), foster families and children home of family-type.

It is important that the child could get pedagogical influence, in order the placement, in which the child was placed; provide social, moral, psychological and physical support [20]. Therefore, new forms of arrangement only appears in Ukraine and function within the activities of charitable organizations, religious communities: such as the host family (family, which takes the child for the period of education at weekends or during holidays), urgent family placement (who are ready to take at any time of the day for a short period of a child who needs emergency placement and care), arrangements like family ones - SOS Children's Village (which consist of few families living in the same area, but in different houses and have a small number of children in each family).

The main objectives of boarding schools for orphans and children deprived of parental care is to provide proper conditions of life for their development and training, carrying out rehabilitation services, provision of social security and the right to have proper living conditions, education, gaining a certain level of education and professional orientation.

In conditions of institutional facilities Ukraine still holds a large number of orphans and children deprived of parental care. Although the number of placements children of this category, this form of arrangement tends to decrease. This is because children in this category are cared and protected by the state, but they receive inadequate care, attention and education. This system is being criticized in Ukraine as in these institutions there is: lack of child care, lack of care for children who are placed there, they grow up non-adapted and frequent conflicts between pupils lead to escaping from their institution.

Ukrainian scientists (I. Bogdanov) outlined the following negative aspects of institutional facilities that harm the socialization of children: 1) lack of communication with their biological parents; 2) deformation relationships through hard experience of the past; 3) lack of love, attention, 4) closed environment; 5) cases of violence by staff and pupils; 6) regulation of time; 7) unformed image of "myself"; 8) increasing the feeling of anxiety; 9) emotional dissatisfaction; 10) lack of social skills in personal life; 11) lack of personal space; 12) economic deprivation - children do not have their own savings and experience to spend money; 13) long-term residence in the narrow communicative environment; 14) lack of personal things (except clothing and personal hygiene); 15) early sexual relations; cases of sexual violence; 16) have limited opportunities in the choice of profession; 17) lack of skills in solving their own problems with official structures; 18) social vulnerability after leaving residential care [9].

Although the country and has made important steps to realization and understanding the importance of placements of institutional care transformation, but those that exist in the modern format of Ukrainian institutions, cannot provide adequate social and pedagogical training. The main reason is the lack of individual approach to children, large number of children are placed there, limited emotional relationships with pupils and teachers, lack of their own psychological space etc.

In 2006, the conception was adopted by the state program facilities reformation for orphans and children deprived of parental care. The basic idea of it is to create conditions of life for orphans and children deprived of parental care, as much as possible close to the family ones. Thus, in residential institutions there must be no more than 50 children. In our opinion, the given concept is consistent with existing standards that are functioning in the UK as the number of children in state care institutions of the country is small. Another positive change in the system of boarding schools in Ukraine is the establishment of institutions with a new type of qualified teachers and social workers. We consider that these changes will allow each teaching staff institution find an individual approach to a child and give him an assistance according to his needs, which will facilitate the development of adaptive capacity of the child (i.e. the level of personal opportunities to enter into new conditions of social environment, because they are constantly changing [32]).

Taking into consideration given the above, modern institutional institutions for orphans and children deprived of parental care in Ukraine require transformation. Therefore, the British experience in placement this category of children in foster homes of various types (due to the need, problem or duration) is appropriate for implementation into Ukrainian practice of social protection.

4.5. Family-based Placements for Orphans and Parentally Deprived Children in Ukraine and in the UK

The main reason for such extrapolation of UK achievements is that the foster placement is recognized as the most effective from the pedagogical point of view, since the benefits of this form arrangement are personal approach, continuous process of pedagogical influence on the children’s social education. In the family environment a child has a sense of stability, security, permanence and confidence. This will help to accommodate the individual, his education, successful interaction in the community or in adoptive families [18].

The main forms of family placement of orphans and children deprived of parental care in Ukraine are adoption, foster families and family-type orphanages. A number of adopted orphans and children deprived of parental care, according to statistics in 2010 are given in numerical terms in the diagram (Figure 1) [3, 11]. However, both in Ukraine and in the UK the children age has an influence on the number of adoptions.

Figure 1. Figures of orphaned and parentally deprived children (according to their age) in Ukraine and Great Britain

Data of orphaned children and parentally deprived ones illustrate that in the number of adoptions for the last 5 years remains the same. According to official data of Ministry of Education in Ukraine, the number of such children was as follows: children from birth to 1 year – 2%, aged from 1 to 4 – 70 %, from 5 to 9 – 24%, from 10 to 15 – 3%, from 16 - % [11].

The diagram analysis gives us the possibility to conclude: both in and in remains the tendency of adopting little children (aged from 0 to 2 years old in and from 1 to 4 years old in ). Elder children in (aged from 6 to 10) are mostly adopted by foreign adopters. The number of children aged from 11 to 17 adopted by foreign adopters in 2010 was 229 children, and by Ukrainian adopters – only 50 [3].

In the UK there is mainly family-based care for orphans and children deprived of parental care, each with its own specialization profile. In Ukraine, by contrast, there is an increasing number of establishments and institutional arrangement other than family ones (Table 2).

Table 2. Comparative Table of Family Types Placements for Orphaned and Parentally Deprived Children in Ukraine and Great Britain

Recently, however, in our country began to increasingly develop and introduced the idea of foster care and children homes care as primary forms of arrangement for orphans and children deprived of parental care. In , the foster family started functioning in 1998 and its work is governed by the "Adoptive Family Regulations" (2002.) Since 2006, the "Family Code" of began to regulate the functioning of the given forms of care.

Domestic scholars [7, 8] emphasize that the number of foster families in Ukraine is increasing, but they’re not enough in number to place all children in need and to meet the needs of all children in need. In the UK, almost all children of these categories are arranged in a foster family.

Almost in every part of Great Britain foster family is a main form of arrangement (50 to 78% coverage of the total number of orphans and children deprived of parental care). According to official data of the Ministry of Education of Great Britain in 2011, with 88603 children who’re in need of arrangement in the UK, 60806 are arranged in a foster family [10]. We believe that such a large number of foster children is explained by the variety of types of foster families, where one each has its own specialty and can provide qualified protection of certain categories of children. This example demonstrates the need to review and facilitate the functioning of qualified foster care according to the needs of children in Ukraine.

Legislative changes in Ukraine was the adoption of (2006) "Act about Foster Family", which was introduced age restrictions (according to which all foster children are to leave the foster family of by the retirement age of carers) and placement of a foster child in a family with one foster parent was allowed (as before 2006 only a married couple was allowed to foster a child).

Thus, the number of foster families, children homes of family type and children in them is growing rapidly in Ukraine. It should be noted that the number of foster families has abruptly increased from 180 families (in 2005) to 744 families (2006). In 2010, according to the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of Ukraine, data there were 3 195 foster families and 535 children homes of family-type [3]. This fact indicates the readiness of the Ukrainian system of social child protection to development and transformations.

We support such opinion, as recently in Ukraine family-based care became more widespread, but the number of foster families and children homes of family-types is not enough to place all orphans and children deprived of parental care [17]. In our opinion, although the index of children placed in family-based accommodation in the United Kingdom (74%) [11] and in Ukraine (73.5%) [3] is almost the same, but in the UK the effective ones for such children is functioning of different types of foster care placements according to the needs of the child. We should not forget about the category of children who are “difficult” to place in the family - children with special needs, elder children, groups of brothers and sisters, children who had a negative experience of living in foster family.

Institutional care can not contribute to the optimal development of children, on the condition of adequate resources provision; such care may support their adequate cognitive development. Even if children of institutional care will be able to function in normal regime, their cognitive development and brain development is likely to be lower than of children’s who are brought up in families [27]. Therefore, the earlier children from residential care will placed to family environment, the better will be the results. Early removal of children from residential care is important for their further development [21, 24].

For Ukrainian state is helpful the British experience of orphans social protection and children deprived of parental care in Britain.

4.6. Main Points of Achieving Efficient Work of the Children Social Protection System in the UK

From the above, we can outline the basic points of achieving efficient work of the child social protection system in the that might be successfully implemented into the national system of :

1. Focus on the child system: each child being involved to the social protection system must be recognized as an individual with his rights to participate in decision-making (according to his age).

2. The balance of the child's right to be with his birth families: family is the best environment for raising a child.

3. Interconsistency and professionals’ co-working with the child's family and the child, himself, which is the necessary factor to achieve positive results.

4. Early intervention, prevention that is an important factor that reduces the period of the child’s living in unfavorable environment.

5. A variety of social protection services according to the needs of children.

6. The use of modern scientific research in the professional practice of orphans and children deprived of parental care social protection.

7. Risk management as an integral factor of the child social protection.

8. The effectiveness of assistance in the child social protection (at different levels).

Ukraine has already made the first steps to improve the social protection of orphans and children deprived of parental care: created guest families, families who take children on weekends, and others. But such forms exist only within the activities of charitable organizations therefore require governmental support. We believe that the rapid decline in increasing the number of orphans in the country since 2009 (from 100.8 thousand children to 98.1 thousand children in 2010 [3]) and increasing the number of children placed in family care accommodations is the result of the tasks of social policy and tendency to preserve biological children in the family, to implement preventive measures to parental care deprivation, to support family care.

5. Conclusion and Recommendation

To achieve a high level in social protection of orphans and children deprived of parental care, Ukraine has to carry out a number of innovations, starting from the adoption laws and regulations concerning the types of family care placements and giving them professional level (with the appropriate state financial assistance, training candidates in order to get ready them to meet children needs, etc.). Based on the identified gains as to the implementation of social protection of orphans and parentally deprived children in the it’s reasonably possible to outline the directions that might be successfully implemented in socio-pedagogical work of :

1. Reformation the state care institutions. Reducing the number of children being placed in these institutions. This will help to perform by individual approach, it will lead to better child development, and better opportunities to adapt a care-leaver within a society.

2. Legislative approving and defining the functions and types of foster care. According to specialization to staff and train the carers, because in Ukraine fostering hasn’t been widespread very much yet.

3. Ensuring the transition of foster parenthood into professional level, as a form of arrangement available today is a kind of "hidden adoption" (a process when the foster family doesn’t cooperate with biological parents of the child and doesn’t pursue the idea of a child and his birth parents being reunited, but at the same time do not adopt the child because of benefits and payments provided for a foster child).

4. Conducting obligatory training the prospective foster and adoptive parents, because children who live in institutional establishments require special attention and individual approach. This requires communicative skills with this category of children, psychological and moral training and support.

5. Promoting the protection of foster parents, which is a very important factor in the formation of healthy relationships within the family, to provide effective assistance to children. Considering the experience of the United Kingdom, where the foster parents have right to have a vacation and the child at this time might be under the supervision of other qualified foster carers, is an effective tool in the process of prevention of “professional exhaustion” of caregivers. This item mainly concerns to children with special needs and treatment who require constant medical care and support of health professionals.

We believe that this problem solving, would increase the number of adoptions, or placement of orphans and children deprived of parental care with special needs in Ukraine. The number of adopted children in Ukraine of this category is small.

6. Providing support to the categories of children after leaving foster care or institutions and to provide further moral and psychological support to care-leavers [12].

7. Establishing organizations (private and public) of adoption and placement a child to a foster family, which would deal with the matching children and parents, would train and counsel them, advice and support the carers.

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