Director of the DPR State Agency for Family and Children Affairs Svetlana Mayboroda talked about the activities of the institution, as well as summed up its work for 2019, the agency’s press service reports.
“The agency’s activities are aimed primarily at saving the family of a child. For this purpose, jointly with departments, we carry out measures on prevention of negative phenomena, among which are social orphanhood, domestic violence and children who willfully leave the places of living,” Svetlana Mayboroda explained.
Summing up the work the agency carried out in 2019, the director informs that of the total number of orphans and children deprived of parental care living in the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic, which is about 4,000 children, eighty percent are brought up with family-type forms of care: in foster care/under guardianship, in family-type orphanages, adoptive families.
“Since 2015, 303 children have been adopted in the Republic, 47 of whom found their families in 2019. The process of adopting children from family groups, children with disabilities, as well as those from older age groups is ongoing,” the agency’s chief noted.
Svetlana Mayboroda also spoke about the agency’s work on protecting housing and property rights of orphans and children deprived of parental care, replenishing family-type children’s homes and foster families. She also talked about the requirements to potential fosterers and adoptive parents.
Moreover, the director explained the difference between homeless and uncared-for children and stressed, “There are no children of the homeless category in the Republic! She noted that if a child leaves the family willfully, law enforcement bodies take immediate measures to seek out him/her. If it is not in the child’s interest to return to the family, the child is taken to a children’s social center.