Last year shelters throughout Ukraine took in 30,000 street kids, either orphans or children abandoned by their parents. According to official statistics, the number of waifs begging has been steadily rising. To date, nobody can give the exact figure of children on the streets in Ukraine. It is known, however, that the year before last over 6,000 homeless children and 19,000 children given to vagrancy were uncovered in raids staged by juvenile protective services. In one year, 18,500 parents whose behavior negatively affected their own children were brought to court.
The State Institute for the Problems of Family and Youth has recently made public the results of its research and painted a social portrait of the modern Ukrainian child on the street. The portrait is based on polls of the children themselves, and its results are quite unexpected. As a rule, runaways are strong-willed personalities who share a common feeling of abandonment by family and the state alike. For most of them life on the street is a conscious decision and for very few merely a result of some temporary conflict. They are lured by the romance of travel, new impressions, acquaintances, and changing the surroundings they have grown used to. Even four-year-olds leave home following their older siblings, while children at the age of six make similar decisions independently. By running away children are protesting the lack of sanitation at home (26%), being undernourished and poorly dressed (25%), the antisocial behavior of their parents (30%), maltreatment (12%), and the indifference their kin display toward them (12%). Children from well-to-do families (less than 10%) leave homes over conflicts with parents in an attempt to assert themselves. This happens at the age of twelve or thirteen, that is, at the time of the apparent crisis in the adolescent behavior and shows a clearly demonstrative nature with the child trying to stand his or her ground. To illustrate, one girl ran away from home because the parents did not buy her a computer and instead spent the money on a new refrigerator to replace an old one that had broken down.
Over half of the children polled said they spend most of their time in company. These range from small groups from three to five persons to formations of fifteen children or more. Big groups are formed mostly in crowded places, near markets and railroad stations. If a group consists of children under fourteen years, the privileges of the group leader are essentially symbolic. He keeps the group’s money and distributes it quite fairly. Meanwhile, in groups of adolescents over fourteen, leadership acquires clearly authoritarian features. The group leader tries to appropriate the lion’s share of the money earned by the group, keeps the best things from the loot, punishes and encourages, and chooses his confidants. Mutual aid is rendered within the group only, while outsiders are not tolerated and the group tries to demonstrate their strength on them.
Nadiya KOMAROVA, manager of the Center for the Theory and Methodology of Social Work, State Institute of Family and Youth told The Day:
“On the streets of big cities there are no children working without adult supervision. Little beggars also give their money to adults. In small towns and district centers children on the street face more difficulties, as they have very little to eat. Meanwhile, Kyiv street kids sometimes order clothes and tell us where we should deliver them. Excessive assistance only spoils them.”
Research conducted by psychologists suggests that very few street kids are ashamed of their lifestyle. They develop a sponger’s attitude toward everything. They do not even feel grateful for the assistance given to them and have no qualms about stealing. They use their wretchedness as an excuse for beating children from well-to-do families and taking away their money and clothes. They try to show their supremacy over their peers, because, in their view, they possess the supreme value, freedom, not realizing that this unbridled freedom degrades their personalities.
Undoubtedly, preventive treatment is the best way to eradicate any disease. So far we are making our first attempts at working with underprivileged families and developing mechanisms of influencing families in a number of pilot projects. We open crisis management centers for young people that provide counseling to both children and adults. Meanwhile, sociologists and pedagogues embrace democratic principles in working with homeless children who do not want to change their lifestyle. They open rehabilitation centers providing permanent and daytime accommodation for children and work with them on the streets.
