Exploratory practice oriented project "Pain of Our Time"

Research main part

(Slide 3. Famous people with their adopted children)

                                          "Caring people responding to unfamiliar trouble

                                                          near you or on the other side of the planet

                                                       are backbone of the world".

Svetlana Sorokina

      I’ve read a book written by journalist and TV presenter Svetlana Sorokina "Not children’s stories". She raises an adoptive daughter. This book opened for me a new area of children's life and children's issues. Then I found out that singer Tatyana Ovsienko, lawyer Michael Barshchevsky’s family and the head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov raise foster children too. American actors Nicole Kidman and  Tom Cruise raise foster children (a son and a daughter), star of Hollywood Angelina Jolie also has adoptive children (a boy from Cambodia, a girl from Ethiopia and a boy from Vietnam)…

(Slide 4. Dante Alighieri, Johann Sebastian Bach, Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

      Do you know that such well-known people as Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), German composer Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), French writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and American entrepreneur and inventor Steve Jobs were foster children?

      Why are there some children living without parents? How do they feel themselves   and grow? I’ve been interested in these questions and I’ve tried to answer them in my project.
       Statistics says that if a child loses his or her parents in an accident, the relatives usually take care of this child. But there are some orphanage and children's houses where there are children having biological parents, but these parents don’t want to take care of their own children.

       I live, I go to school, I walk ... and I am surrounded by people. Are these people good and kind? Or, perhaps, one of those who passed by, did not want to raise his or her own child…

(Slide 5. History of Russian children’s homes and orphanages)

       At the beginning of my doing this project I found out history of children’s homes and orphanages in Russia.

      I can tell, history of children’s homes and orphanages in Russia has 4 peaks.

      The first one was after the First World War and the Revolution of 1917, when orphanages and children’s homes appeared in Russia and they had to cope with homeless children, child labor and exploitation.

      The second peak of homeless children was after bad harvests, hunger, diseases and repressions of 1930-s.

      The third period was connected with the Second World War because many people had perished in the lines, died in occupied territory and in concentration camps, died from hunger.

      The fourth period has been observed since 1991 when there were economic difficulties in the state which reduced the quality of citizens’ life and many people lost their work.

      The most successful tutors of the Russian children’s homes were M. S. Pogrebinskiy (1895-1937), A.S. Makarenko (1888-1939), S.A. Kalabalin (1903-1981) and A.G. Yavlinskiy (1915-1981), the father of modern politician Gregoriy Yavlinskiy.

(Slide 6. Average percentage of homeless children to the number of citizens

in the other countries)

      There are many children living without their biological families in the world. The reasons of it are different. Almost every country thinks about this problem and tries to find the best care system for such children.  

      Most countries have children’s institutions and orphanages where children living without their biological families can get childcare, parenthood and education. But the experience shows that children’s institutions and orphanages are not so effective if we speak about parenting.

      Modern deinstitutionalization is the process of reforming child care system and closing down orphanages and children’s institutions, finding new placements for children currently resident and setting up replacement services to support vulnerable families in non institutional ways. It became common in many developed countries. Nowadays there are no children’s institutions and orphanages in such countries as the USA, the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Australia and others. In these countries there are only orphanages for children till their placement in foster homes. It has been taking place in Eastern Europe and is now encouraged by the European Union for new entrants. It is also starting in Africa and Asia.

(Slide 7. Increasing number of homeless children in Russia

 for the last 5 years)

      The number of children’s homes is increasing now. Every year in Russia parents abandon about 11,000 of their own children. As a result there are 10-15 such children for every 1,000 children who were born. 

      About 98% of all children living in Russian children’s homes are not orphans.      According to sociologists’ researches, the number of homeless and abandoned children is increasing by 170 000 people annually in our country. The General Prosecutor's Office says nowadays the number of homeless and abandoned children is more than 
2 million in Russia (L. Petranovskaya “An adopted child has joined the class”).

(Slide  8. Reasons of children’s getting into children’s homes)

      Children get into children’s homes for a number of reasons.

1. Orphans. These are children who lost both of their parents in some accidents.
2. Abandoned children or social orphans. These children have one or both parents but their parents don’t want to take care of them. 
3. Children whose parents cannot take care of them. These children were taken from drug addicts, alcoholics, prisoners, in other words, from
   people who are not currently able to take proper care of their kids.
4. Disabled children. These children live in special closed institutions for children with some birth defects.  

(Slide  9. Adoption, custody and patronage)

      How do these children live? How often do they find their new parents?

      Even babies realize that they have been left by someone  because  there is no one near them taking care of them all the time.

      There are different variants when a child can feel parental affection, warmth and attention.

      One of them is adoption. It is a priority form of arrangements for children living   without their biological parents.  According to the Family Code of the Russian Federation, adoption is permitted in case of infant children and only for their benefit. The ethnic origin, the membership of a particular religion and culture, the native language, the ability to ensure continuity in the upbringing and education are taken into account in adoption.

      The next variant is guardianship or custody. It’s a kind of family placement for  children under 14 living  without parental care. Health care, property of a child and education are the guardian’s responsibility. In Russia guardianship  is the most popular form of family placement for children living without parental care.

      There is also foster care (patronage). This is one of the ways of caring of a   child when grown-ups not only live with a child, but are employed as teachers of the orphanage where the child has been taken from. They are paid for the taking care and

upbringing of a child. Patronage is intermediate form between temporary and permanent family. It’s very important. For example in 2010 in Russia 7000 children were taken back to the children’s homes.

      Orthodox church in Russia always pays attention to the problem of children living without parents. That’s why there are many orthodox orphanages in different parts of Russia. Svyato-Dimitriyevskiy orphanage in Moscow and “Otrada” orphanage in Maloyaroslavets, “Pavlin” orphanage in Moscow and “Dom Miloserdiya” in St. Petersburg are among them www.rondtb.

      For example, living in Svyato-Dimitriyevskiy orphanage is as living in a big family with children and adults. Girls go to school regularly and go in for music lessons and dancing. They are taught to cook, clean the rooms, wash up and so on. They like holidays such as birthdays, Easter and Christmas and like to prepare for the holidays. Girls also go to the theatres and museums. From time to time they are invited to the houses of the staff or church-goers.

      The main purpose of all orphanages is to find a family for every child and they do their best to do it. About 60 children constantly live in “Dom Miloserdiya”. Since the foundation of it in 1995 185 children have been returned to their native families and 35 children have found their new mothers and farthers.

      We have known that rather famous Moscow archpriest Dmitriy Smirnov oversees three orphanages with fifty children (“Archpriest Dmitriy Smirnov is Pozner’s  guest”, 19 March, 2012).

Psychologists and volunteers do help with this work. They help with food and accommodation.

      If adults decide to become parents for children living without them, they think about what variant is more comfortable for a child and also for them: custody, patronage or adopting. Of course, adopting is the priority form of arrangements for children living without their biological parents, but at the same time this form is the most responsible for adults because only they begin to take care about their adopted child.

      In Russia an adopted child is completely made equivalent to an own child if we speak about laws. On the one hand, new parents can give him/her another name and surname, change the date of his/her birth in the documents and they also have rights to keep in a secret if he/she was adopted. On the other hand, an adopted child loses all his/her benefits as an orphan from the state. Besides it, formalities are more difficult comparably with custody or patronage.

(Slide  10. Characters of fairy-tales)

      It’s a rather difficult question for adopters to tell their child about his or her adoption. But psychologists say it’s necessary to tell about it.

      The best time to tell an adopted child about the adoption is at the age between two and four. At this age children don’t need a lot of details because they don’t fully understand the situation.

      What is the best way to tell the child about his/her adoption?

      We have found an interesting idea how to tell the child about his/her adoption in the book “An adopted child has joined the class” by the Russian psychologist Liudmila Petranovskaya. She says, “Almost all heroes of fairy-tails are adopted children whose p arents got them by unusual method”.

     We’ve found some of them:

1. Kolobok (Roly-Poly) – a baked roll, the character of a Russian nursery tale;
2. Thumbelina – a girl from the flower, the character of a Danish fairy-tale written by Hans Christian Andersen;
3. Pinocchio – a revive wooden boy, the character of an Italian fairy-tale written by Carlo Collodi;
4. Snegurochka – a snow girl, the character of a Russian opera composed by Nikolay Rimski-Korsakov;
5. Tom Thumb – a tiny-little boy appeared in the handkerchief, the character of an English nursery tale;
6. Cheburashka – a little creature appeared in the box with oranges, the character of a Russian cartoon.

      Liudmila Petranovskaya is the prizewinner of President of the Russian Federation in the field of education.

      (Slide  11. Pavel Astakhov)

      11,157 Russian children were adopted in 2010: 7802 – in Russia, 1060 – in the USA and 2295 – in other countries.

      The information about unfriendly attitude towards some adopted children by their new parents in Russia and abroad, especially in the USA, appears in the Media from time to time.

      However, the problem is not in foreign adopters but in some adults.  

      Pavel Astakhov, Children’s Rights Commissioner to the President of the Russian Federation, said:

      “…60 000 children from Russia were given to the US citizens’ families. Families in the USA are rather big, they have got three or four children. Rather often you can meet families with seven –  nine children, three or four of them are adopted ones. Mainly, these families are normal and good. The problem is that there is no agreement between the  RF and  the  USA  connected  with   adopted  children. It’s  necessary  to found  such

Service…” (from the interview on January 28, 2011, TV channel ‘Russia 1’, programme “Good morning, Russia”).

      The agreement about adoption between the RF and the USA was signed on July 13, 2011.

      There are state programmes between Russia and some foreign countries. These programmes help children from Russian Children’s homes to spend their vacations in warm healthy climate and even find a new family.

Leaflet “I’m not indifferent!”

      If you want to help abandoned children and orphans and make their living better, you can do something:

- you can become volunteers and help when and where it’s necessary;

- you can find out who needs urgent help now and find the time to provide it;

- you can gather different things (pumpers, kids’ cosmetics and food, clothes and  

  toys…) for children's homes;

- you can take care of  sick children living without parents in hospitals;

-  you can bring in charitable donations to children's homes;

- you can provide financial assistance to a child who is very seriously ill;

- you can tell your friends and other people about orphans’ problems.