Date: 13/11/12
Ukraine. Priority to the adoption of children between 7 and 10 years: from 2014 no longer have to remain in institutions.
children-driven-Ukrainian-350Ukraine at the forefront in promoting a culture of adoption. Welcoming the indication of experts and practitioners, the Minister for Social Policies of the country, Natalie King , has been the core focus of his department to ensure that, as of 2014, no child abandoned, healthy and above 7 years, is no longer assigned to an institution : local governments will be required to encourage more and more of these smaller destination for families, group homes or other similar forms of care. The choice to focus on the adoption of children range between 7 and 10 years can be explained by the need to find their accommodation as a priority, as they are considered more needy than others. The first signs of this policy to combat institutionalization is already beginning to see: as stated by the Commissioner for Children's Rights for Ukraine, Yuriy Pavlenko , in 2013 almost half of the regions where there are institutions have not received any child .
Currently in Ukraine there are 846 homes, and it plans to open 30 more by the end of the year. At the end of 2012, there were 280 institutions, 55 of which are specifically dedicated to children with disabilities. To date, a total of 91,000 abandoned children, 76,000 were settled with a family , of the 26,000 children enrolled in the database for the adoptions, 25,000 are more than 7 years, suffering from disability, or brothers and sisters, who by law can not can be separated. The couple awaiting adoption are 1,600, but they did request for children under the age of the "privileged".
Always with the aim to drastically reduce the population of abandoned children, the number of social workers has been increased by 12,000 units , so as to reach the widest possible pool of families: in 2014, then, in the institutes are welcomed only children with disability , in respect of which - the authorities say - there is still a lack of predisposition to adopt by Ukrainian families.