All children who end up in orphanages for various reasons dream of having a real family. Now the process of adoption or legalization of guardianship may become more complicated. Employees of the national organization Child Protection Service are outraged by the lack of professionalism behind the resolution “On the Issue of Organizing Legislation with regard to Guardianship and Care of Orphans and Children Deprived of Parental Care,” issued by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine on Oct. 17, 2007. They are convinced that this document contradicts Ukrainian legislation and violates the rights of children who are now being brought up by guardians (over 64,000) and those for whom custody is being established (nearly 15,000). The document has already been sent to raion state administrations and village and city councils, but the employees of these services are still unsure whether to carry out these new instructions.
“The new decision of the Cabinet of Ministers was supposed to explicate existing laws,” says Liudmyla Volynets, the co-chairman of the Child Protection Service. “In fact, the opposite has happened: the document has only caused a number of complications concerning the legalization of care for children. One of the points of the resolution seems absurd to us because it states that a child in care after reaching the age of seven has to draw up a written agreement for the disposal or sale of dwelling. The decision makers think that a seven-year-old child is capable of deciding whether at some point in the future s/he will need the dwelling inherited from his or her parents. At the same time, the form of such an agreement and the way it should be filled out and submitted to the custodial authorities have not been defined yet.”
According to Volynets, the issue of the protection of children’s housing rights is the most complicated one in the system of existing Ukrainian legislation: during the first six months of 2007 alone over 100 children ended up in orphanages because their housing rights were violated. Human rights activists are convinced that this number may increase because the content of the new decision broadens the categories of parents who may lose custody of their children.
In the past, parental rights were stripped from incarcerated people, those who refused to pay child support or used physical violence against children, etc. Now, parents who have been deemed mentally ill or intellectually challenged can be deprived of parental rights. According to experts, the mental health of parents cannot be an essential reason for depriving parents of their custodial rights. The main thing for a child is to live in a real family.
Over 76 percent of 20,000 children who now live in orphanages have families (their parents maintain contact with them but for some reason do not support them). An act on homelessness that is drawn up for such children previously indicated that a child did not have a definite residence. According to the cabinet’s decision, the act will indicate that the child has no family and therefore requires state care. Experts think this is unlawful because the child may lose contact with its real family after ending up in the care of strangers (through adoption, placement in family-type houses, or other forms of care).
Children’s rights activists are also worried by the fact that the decision limits the age of guardians. In their opinion, retired people — 55-year-old women and 60-year-old men — cannot be caregivers. But Ukrainian realities show that pensioners are the ones who most often become caregivers. Today they are raising over 50 percent of children (nearly 35,000). In order to keep the child with them they have to prove their family kinship. This is also very difficult to do even in cases where godmothers, godfathers, aunts, uncles, or cousins once removed are the child’s guardians.
Experts are convinced that if the cabinet’s decision comes into force, there will be hard times for orphanages and family-type houses. Every year over 12,000 children find a new family in these types of institutions, and the numbers of children could be unlimited. Meanwhile, the newly-adopted resolution states that no more than six children should live in a family-type home.
Experts at the Child Protection Service believe that the new decision is upsetting the balance in the process of legalizing state care for children. At the moment they are demanding that the Cabinet of Ministers rescind the decision or bring it into conformity with current legislation. They emphasize that the new document should not destroy but support such types of placements for orphans as guardianship and care.
