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By Sarah Slobin and Joanna Plucinska
Sept 12 (Reuters) – Ukraine says it has disposed of nearly 100,000 young people from institutional care. With the help of UNICEF, the UN youth agency, it is still looking to succeed in some 26,000 of them.
At the boarding school of the Odessa orphanage, 4 months after Russia invaded Ukraine, an air raid alarm sent nurses in white coats to the emergency room for citizens to a basement under the kitchen. Among them, Tanya, a 12-year-old girl who prefers a pink sun. hat.
On June 15, Tanya, who is autistic and does not speak, moved out of the institution, her four-year home, following a local government order to evacuate in March. however, they couldn’t take proper care of her, so the state took over, the orphanage’s director said.
Tanya and the other 4 disabled children in the orphanage traveled about 800 km (500 miles) through exercise to the state establishment away from the fighting, with others from local households.
The 11-hour exercise adventure was aimed at bringing Tanya to safety, but for 40 days she and 16 other young people followed by Reuters from the Odessa facility did not appear in Ukraine’s national database. It was only on July 25 that the national government said its location had been searched.
It was an example of the difficulties Ukraine faced in locating children scattered during the war. Tanya and the others she traveled with are now fully registered, however, UNICEF says it has yet to locate another 26,000 children who, before being transferred to the orphanage. formula – were returned to families or legal guardians after the invasion of Russia.
Reuters spoke to more than a dozen children’s rights experts, children’s coverage organizations and government officials in Ukraine and beyond to tell the story of the country’s efforts to track down children who returned from orphanages. Tanya’s circle of relatives may not be reached for comment.
Any attempt to track down other people fleeing an invasion is heavy. But child cover staff and foreign organizations, adding that the United Nations, told Reuters they were involved in the lack of information or record-keeping through Ukrainian ministries about the children’s whereabouts. U. N. officials have warned that some may be exposed to violence or human trafficking, have not presented express evidence and Reuters has not independently established this.
The National Social Service of Ukraine (NSS), which monitors the rights of young people, said it had done “everything imaginable to maintain the life and physical condition of young people and save them from being at the epicentre of hostilities”. He indicated that help is provided to families through specialized social facilities and that he is executing to solve problems.
To view a photo report, click https://widerimage. Reuters. com/story/ukraine-seeks-to-trace-thousands-of-orphans-scattered-by-war
For a media version, click https://graphics. reuters. com/UKRAINE-CRISIS/ORPHANS/dwpkrxzwwvm/index. html
RETURNED
When Russia invaded on February 24, there were more than 105,000 young people in Ukraine’s network of more than 700 establishments, known as orphanages or “boarding schools,” full-time or part-time. This represents just over 1% of the child population. the rate of institutionalization in Europe, according to the knowledge of the European Union and UNICEF.
According to UNICEF, about a portion of the young people in Ukrainian orphanages were disabled. But Ukraine’s state registration system, known as UIAS’s “Children,” was unable to track or insinuate young people sent home through institutions, according to the Government Reform Support Project in Ukraine (SURGe), a company funded through the Canadian government under contract with the NSS to provide assistance.
Instead, the knowledge base contained general data about young people, such as whether they had siblings or disabilities, or whether they were eligible for adoption. The SURGe team began manually collecting information about the prestige of young people in orphanages, Google bureaucracy and Google Sheets. construction also began on a knowledge gathering module to upload to the knowledge base, which began operating in May.
The task has been confused by the fact that the boarding schools belong to three other ministries, with day-to-day jobs spread across 24 regions, a SURGe spokesman said.
By the end of June, SURGe said it had obtained information from 750 of the 751 orphanages in Ukraine about the number of children sent home, evacuated and remaining.
As of July 29, more than 96,000 young people had been returned – returned to their parents or guardians – according to SURGe data, which had not been reported in the past. Another 1,900 young people – along with relatives, such as Tanya – had been evacuated to other orphanages in Ukraine.
Of the 48,000 young people residing full-time, some 38,800 were returned to their parents or guardians, according to statistics from NSS and UNICEF. The Government and UNICEF are looking for these young people lately.
UNICEF and its local partners say this means locating and visiting each and every child, adding places where there are clashes.
“Unless you make a stop at each and every place,” said Aaron Greenberg, UNICEF’s senior regional adviser for Europe and Central Asia, Child Protection, “it’s tricky if there are children missing. “
By the end of July, UNICEF and its partners had classified 13,047 of the young people who returned to their families after 24-hour care as the most vulnerable and in need of assistance. They said they would continue to monitor those young people and try to succeed in others. .
On 11 August, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights expressed its fear https://www. ohchr. org/en/press-releases/2022/08/ukraine-un-mavens-sound-alarm-situation-youngsters-disabilities about the well-being of young people with disabilities in Ukrainian boarding schools. In addition to the “known problems” within the system, the Commission’s experts said that “data on the whereabouts of young people are now lacking. “
Known issues he discussed included neglect, abuse, and physical restraints.
Daria Herasymchuk, who works in President Volodomyr Zelenskiy’s office as Ukraine’s commissioner for youth rights, told Reuters the government has asked ministries with young people in their charge to monitor their well-being and their parents’ ability to provide care at home. But when asked about young people in facilities that are not monitored, he said better coordination needs to be improved.
Specifically, he said there were riots with young people evacuated through adoptive families or guardians and those who left Ukraine in the first 10 days of fighting. But he added that not all young people want intense supervision.
Herasymchuk also said he had no data on the condition of 4,777 children sent home through Russian-occupied orphanages in Luhansk, Donetsk and Kherson since the war began. A government online page https://youngstersofwar. gov. ua/en/ filed in August said Ukraine had amassed data that more than 7,000 children had been brought to Russia. Reuters may simply not verify it.
SOCIAL ORPHANS
Tanya, like nine out of 10 young people in Ukraine’s orphanage system, is a “social orphan”: young people whose parents cannot care for them or whose parental rights are denied them by Ukrainian law.
The legislation specifies that children can be separated from parents who have chronic addictions or a history of scammers, for example, or who teach their children. on the figures in question, replied Herasymchuk, the commissioner for youth rights.
Tanya’s parents couldn’t help but run to take care of her, the orphanage staff said. They have waived their parental rights, the director said. locate them independently. He also refused to share any documents similar to Tanya.
This is not the first time Ukraine has rejected young people in mass establishments. Despite this, child coverage staff say the country is ill-prepared.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, according to UNICEF, 42,000 young people, including young people with disabilities, were discharged without verification of the situation in their family environment.
UNICEF’s Greenberg said he had unsuccessfully suggested to Kyiv that it adopt software that he and governments around the world use to produce a virtual trail that follows children. Such software makes it imaginable to record children’s medical records and fitness desires.
Zelenskiy and the NSS did not respond to a request for comment on the matter.
MONITORS
In late March, a Ukrainian charity, Partnership 4 Every Child, signed a contract with UNICEF to collect data and help children in war-affected orphanages.
Since there was no centralized data, he drew up a list of establishments to touch and sent social staff to stop at families or asked local children to make a stop, said Vasylyna Dybaylo, director of the association.
She said reports had revealed no cases of missing youths. In two cases, after the charity’s visit, the young people returned to their families, he said the government had relocated them due to “stress on their lives or health”. He did not elaborate.
Preliminary reports of the visits showed that the families’ wishes ranged from beds to physical therapy, Dybaylo said; many parents were concerned about schooling when schools reopened in September.
POVERTY
Ukraine ratified the right to the family, which is part of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, in 1991.
This right is a component of the European Union Charter and other Eastern European states, such as Romania and Slovakia, have secured EU investments to close establishments housing children, said Peter McDermott, chief executive of Lumos, a UK-based charity that is running to end systemic institutionalisation. . .
Ukraine, recently admitted as a candidate for EU membership, has not won an EU budget to close establishments and has resisted this trend. Since 1990, its rate of young people in establishments has almost quadrupled, according to the peak of recent comparable data. In the EU’s neighbouring countries, it is flat or declining.
Poverty is the main reason why children are placed in establishments: 80% of families fall below the poverty line after the birth of their current child, according to a 2021 study on coverage systems for children conducted by the former Ukrainian commissioner for children’s rights, Mykola Kuleba. than in the workplace from 2014 to 2021.
A relative, Lyudmila Kryvoshchiy, who lives south of Kyiv, said she brought her 10-year-old son, Artem, who has Down syndrome, home when the boarding school where he stayed in central Ukraine closed due to COVID quarantine two weeks before the war. Started.
At home, Artem filed online consultations with a psychologist and speech therapist, but he didn’t need to look at the computer, his mother said. He now spends all day glued to his smartphone, he said, adding that he was hopeful the war would end and Artem would go back to school now.
“He’s more independent in school,” she said. That’s why I liked this educational institution. “
“EUROPEAN ORIENTATION”
Some early childhood professionals say that the longer a child stays in an institution, the more likely they are to suffer from developmental disorders.
“Children want to be able to bond with at least one adult,” said John Williamson, a U. S. social worker who has worked for more than 40 years on systems for young people outside the circle of family members and has been a representative of agencies such as the U. N.
With this in mind, in 2017, Ukraine drafted a law to reduce the number of young people in its institutions. The Odessa boarding school, where Tanya lived, was intended to be part of that effort, its director said.
In June, the smell of roses that bordered the path that led to the squatted buildings stuck. In the garden, citizens tended tomatoes, lettuce and eggplants. Above, the ceilings were painted with white squares and red crosses.
The orphanage’s director, Andriy Pechenyi, said it housed another 110 people before the war, a combination of youth and adults with disabilities. A former comedian, he said he and President Zelenskiy had been part of the same group of comedians, though in others. times. He assumed this position in 2021 with reforms.
“We all perceive that soon there will be no more young people in orphanage boarding schools in Ukraine,” Pechenyi said. “We are heading towards Europe.
Children with disabilities are evaluated by a “defectologist” before being placed in a boarding school classified according to a variety of special needs. The Odessa boarding school has a No. 2 profile for “children with moderate intellectual retardation,” the regional administrator said.
Irina Nikolaeva Ogurtsova, the defectologist who worked with Tanya, said that young people in Odessa take 3 categories of 35 minutes a week, basically in speech treatment and communication. The rest of the time, they are engaged in other activities: gardening, sewing, drawing and painting, according to the staff.
In Odessa, the journalists’ visit, locals gathered around the director, spontaneously hugging him or looking to show him handicrafts. Some also clung to journalists, asking for hugs.
POLITICS
In June 2021, the Zelenskiy government reversed some of the 2017 reforms, passed during a previous administration, to exclude certain types of establishments and keep around 50,000 children in care, adding those with special wishes and children under the age of three.
Zelenskiy did not respond to a request for comment on the decision. Herasymchuk, Ukraine’s commissioner for children’s rights, said Ukraine was seeking to reform the system, but that the government will first have to help families so they can take care of their children. young people independently.
School closures are politically sensitive in Ukraine, as orphanages are one of the few reliable service providers and also bring money to local communities, according to children’s policy experts.
The Ukrainian government does not publish aggregate information on its budgets. In a 2021 report, former children’s rights commissioner Kuleba said keeping a child in them costs more than 200,000 UAH ($5400) on average annually. By comparison, Ukraine’s GDP is consistent with last year’s capita $4,835, according to the World Bank.
The director of the Pechenyi orphanage declined to elaborate on the main financial points and the NSS responded to a request for comment on the matter.
Tanya first entered the Odessa orphanage in 2018 at the age of 8, after her parents divorced and her mother had a momentary child, she said.
In June, as war approached Odessa, the orphanage said they called Tanya’s mother to ask if she could pick her up.
It did not yet have the resources, so the state assumed the duty of transferring Tanya to the institution, Pechenyi said. Reuters simply does not verify this account independently.
“THE LITTLE STORK”
In June, nurses accompanied Tanya on the 11-hour exercise adventure westward. His caregivers told Reuters a scale at the orphanage they were worried about: a movement as smooth as turning a page in an e-book can affect an autistic child.
Together with young people from nearby institutions, loaded into six ambulances, they were taken to the exercise station, where police prevented filming. Tanya was transferred to a former hospital in the village of Dzhuriv in the Ivano-Frankivsk region.
When Tanya arrived at the Lelechenya Rehabilitation Center (Little Stork), she was crying and agitated, according to a Reuters reporter who surrendered a few days later.
The center’s director, Lilia Ambrozivna, said the space is not designed for residential use and is intended for young people with “simpler conditions. “
The newcomers are unpredictable, frantic, Ambrozivna said.
However, in August, Tanya “adapted well,” the director said. ($1 = 36. 9246 hryvnias)
(Reporting by Sarah Slobin in New York and Joanna Plucinska in Ukraine; Additional reporting by Stefaniia Bern, Oleh Papushenko and Edgar Su in Ukraine; Edited by Sara Ledwith)