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03/07/08
Children have to live in a Family
On June 25-28 EveryChild Ukraine participated in the Third International Conference titled “Children Have to Live in Family” hosted in St. Peterburg.
Third International Conference “Children Have to Live an Family” was organized by St. Petersburg Charitable Foundation “Parent’s Bridge” with the support of St. Petersburg Committee on Labour and Social Issues, The Public Chamber of Russian Federation in accordance with the Decree of the President Vladimir Putin on “Year of Family”. The conference was held in conjunction with an awarding the title of “Childrens Friendly City” to St. Petersburg.
Over 350 representatives of child welfare service providers and government administrations from Russia, Ukraine, Netherlands, Latvia, Poland, USA and Finland gathered for the two-day conference. EveryChild Ukraine office was represented by Zinaida Kyyanytsya – Deputy Director of the Representative Office.Mariya Levina, President of “Parent’s Bridge”, opened the conference by underlining the progress being made in adoption in Russia. “Today we stress on the foster families, but we have to remember that it’s also a temporary shelter for children, based on a contract between the state and foster parents”, - she concluded.
Levina informed that in 2007 5 thousand of kids in Russia were transferred from foster families to child institutions. She also said that today representatives of business community do not cooperate intensively with NGOs on long-term projects connected with fostering and adoption, whereas they prefer to be involved in PR-activities with gifts and candies.The event was focused on stimulation of further development of social services connected with child protection and prevention of early abandonment in Russian Federation and abroad, setting cooperation between governmental structures and NGOs, establishing public monitoring in children’s and families’ rights protection, launching a professional community for solving common problems and objectives, sharing experience, introducing standards (values and technologies).
The following topics were discussed:
- assisting to children in crisis;
- prevention of child abandonment;
- recruiting and support of foster parents;
- post-internat adaptation and support of care-leavers;
- national standards of social services in prevention of child abandonment;
- fundraising in social sphere;
- social work and media.Participants of the conference praised the strong impact of the partnership between the local government and the NGO community to reduce the number of children entering orphanages and shelters.
