After the Russian invasion, nearly 100,000 young Ukrainians were expelled from institutional care. With UNICEF’s support, the government is still looking to succeed in some 26,000 of them.
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Tanya, 12, who is autistic and talks, watches other children draw with chalk on a playground at a special wish center in Odessa, Ukraine.
At the boarding school of the Odessa orphanage, 4 months after Russia invaded Ukraine, an anti-aircraft alarm sent nurses in urgent white coats to 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 has autism and does not speak, moved out of her four-year-old home following an order from the local government to evacuate in March. Take care of her properly, so the state took over, the orphanage’s director said.
Tanya and the other four disabled children from the orphanage traveled 500 miles through the exercise to the state establishment away from the fighting, with others from local homes.
The 11-hour exercise was conducted to get Tanya to safety, but for 40 days, she and 16 other young men tracked by Reuters from the Odessa facility did not appear in Ukraine’s national database. It wasn’t until July 25 that the national government declared his location searched. .
It was an example of Ukraine’s difficulties in locating young people scattered during the war. Tanya and the others she travelled with are now fully accounted for, however, UNICEF says it has yet to adhere to another 26,000 young people who, instead of being transferred to the orphanage formula, were returned to families or legal guardians after Russia’s invasion.
Teacher Irina Nikolaeva Ogurtsova leads the youths to the basement shelter while the school’s airstrike warning is activated.
Children climb the stairs to the basement.
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 locate young people turned away from orphanages. Tanya’s circle of relatives may not be reached for comment.
Any attempt to track down other people fleeing an invasion is cumbersome. But child cover staff and foreign organizations, the UN added, have expressed fear over the lack of data or records through Ukrainian ministries on the whereabouts of the children. UN officials have warned that some may simply be exposed to violence or human trafficking.
Ukraine’s National Social Service (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 epicenter of hostilities. “He said that help for families is provided through specialized social establishments and is being implemented to solve problems.
When Russia invaded on February 24, there were 105,000 young people in Ukraine’s network of more than 700 establishments, known as orphanages or “boarding schools,” full-time or part-time. That’s just over 1% of the child population: the rate of institutionalization in Europe, according to EU and UNICEF data.
About a portion of the young people in Ukrainian orphanages were disabled, according to UNICEF. But the Ukrainian state’s record-keeping formula failed to track or hint at young people sent home through institutions, according to the Ukrainian Government Reform Support Project (SURGe), a Canadian body. government-funded firm contracted through NSS to assist her.
Tanya sits with other young people at the shelter.
Tanya receives comfort from a member of the Odessa orphanage
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 knowledge about the prestige of young people in orphanages. It also began building a Knowledge Collection Module that will be added to the knowledge base, which began operating in May.
The task has been confused by the fact that the boarding schools belong to 3 other ministries, with day-to-day jobs spread across 24 regions, a SURGe spokesperson said.
In late June, SURGe said it had obtained information from 750 of the 751 orphanages in Ukraine on the number of children sent home, evacuated and remaining.
As of July 29, more than 96,000 children have been returned, returned to their parents or guardians, according to SURGe data. Another 1,900 children, with parents, like Tanya, have been evacuated to other orphanages in Ukraine.
Of the 48,000 full-time resident children, 38,800 have been returned to their parents or guardians, according to NSS and UNICEF statistics. The government and UNICEF are now searching for those children.
Oksana Kogat, a staff member, prepares soup in the room
UNICEF and its local partners say this means locating and visiting each and every child, adding places where there is fighting.
“Unless you stop in each and every place,” said Aaron Greenberg, UNICEF’s senior regional adviser for Europe and Central Asia, child protection, “it’s tricky if there is a shortage of children. “
By the end of July, UNICEF and its partners had prioritized 13,047 of the young people who returned to their families after 24-hour care as the most vulnerable and unsupported. They said they would continue to monitor those young people and try to succeed in others.
On August 11, the UN Commission on Human Rights expressed its fear for the welfare of young disabled Ukrainian interns. In addition to the “known problems” within the system, the commission’s experts said: “There is now a lack of data on the whereabouts of young people. “
The acquaintances he discussed included neglect, abuse and physical restraints.
Daria Herasymchuk, who works under President Volodymyr Zelensky as Ukraine’s commissioner for youth rights, said the government has asked ministries that care for young people to monitor their well-being and their parents’ ability to provide care at home. For establishments that have not been monitored, he said they want to improve coordination.
Soup is ready for lunch at Odessa orphanage
Teacher Irina Nikolaeva Ogurtsova poses for a photo
Herasymchuk also said it had no data on the prestige of 4,777 children sent home from Russian-occupied orphanages in Luhansk, Donetsk and Kherson since the war began. A government website launched in August said Ukraine had collected data on more than 7,000 children brought to Russia.
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 are denied parental rights under Ukrainian law.
The legislation specifies that young people can be taken from parents who have chronic addictions or criminal records, for example, or who teach their children. Some parents leave their children in establishments while they run abroad. respond.
Tanya’s parents couldn’t help but run to take care of her, the orphanage staff said. They waived their parental rights, the director said. As Tanya’s legal guardian, he refused to be interviewed and that was not imaginable to the hounds. to locate them independently. He also refused to share any documents similar to Tanya.
This is not the first time Ukraine has turned away young people in mass establishments. Despite this, child coverage staff say the country is ill-prepared.
Olga Slivka, 18, attends a consultation at the orphanage.
At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2019, according to UNICEF, 42,000 children, including disabled children, were discharged without checking the conditions of their circle of relatives.
Greenberg said he had unsuccessfully suggested to Kyiv that it adopt software that he and governments around the world are employing to produce a virtual trail that follows children. Such software makes it imaginable to record children’s medical records and physical needs.
Zelensky and the NSS did not respond to a request for comment.
In late March, a Ukrainian charity, Partnership 4 Every Child, signed a contract with UNICEF to collect data and children in war-affected orphanages.
Since there was no centralized data, she 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.
Tanya watches the other young people play
She said reports have not revealed cases of missing youths. In two cases, after the charity’s visit, young people returned to their families, saying the government had relocated them due to “stress on their lives or health”.
Preliminary reports of the visits showed that the families’ wishes ranged from beds to physical therapy, Dybaylo said; Many parents were worried about schooling when schools reopened in September.
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 part of the EU 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 U. K. -based charity working to end systemic institutionalization.
Ukraine, recently admitted as a candidate for EU membership, has not gained EU budget to close establishments and has resisted this trend. Since 1990, the rate of young people in its establishments has almost quadrupled, according to the maximum of recent comparable data. neighboring countries, flat or in decline.
Poverty is the main reason children are sent to establishments: 80% of families fall below the poverty line after the birth of their current child, according to a 2021 report on child safety systems by former Ukrainian commissioner for child rights Mykola Kuleba.
Residents participate in a music and theater class.
Politecina Lida, 26, in a gym
One 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 embarked in central Ukraine closed for COVID quarantine two weeks before the war began.
At home, Artem presented 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 hoped the war would end and Artem would be back at school now.
“He’s more independent in school,” she said. That’s why I liked this educational institution. “
Some early childhood professionals say that the longer a child stays in an institution, the more likely he or she is to suffer from developmental disorders.
“Children want to be able to bond with at least one adult,” said John Williamson, an American social worker who has worked for more than 40 years on systems for young people outside the family circle and has been a representative of organizations. like the UN.
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 principal said.
In June, the smell of roses bordered the path leading to the squatted buildings would stick. In the garden, citizens tended tomatoes, lettuce and eggplants. Upstairs, the ceilings were painted with white squares and red crosses.
Nurse Ekaterina Masiuk, 57, comforts citizens in the basement of the orphanage.
Nurse Rita Barba, 52, sits with the young people at the shelter.
The orphanage’s director, Andriy Pechenyi, said it housed about 110 people before the war, a mix of young people and adults with disabilities. A former comedian, said he and President Zelensky had been part of the same comedy troupe, 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 institutionalized according to a variety of special needs.
Irina Nikolaeva Ogurtsova, the defectologist who worked with Tanya, said that young people in Odessa attend 3 categories of 35 minutes a week, most commonly in speech and communication treatment. The rest of the time, they are dedicated to other activities: gardening, sewing, drawing. and painting, according to staff.
In Odessa, the scale of journalists, citizens gathered around the director, spontaneously hugging him or seeking to show him handicrafts. Some also clung to reporters, asking for hugs.
In June 2021, Zelensky’s government reversed some of the 2017 reforms, approved during a previous administration, to exclude certain types of facilities and keep around 50,000 children in care, adding those with special wishes and children under 3 years of age.
Zelensky did not respond to a request for comment on the decision. Herasymchuk said Ukraine needs to reform the system, but the government will first have to provide families so they can care for their children independently.
An animal stuffed with the colors of the Ukrainian flag is placed on a bed at the Lelechenya (Little Stork) rehabilitation center in Dzhuriv.
Tanya receives comfort through a nurse at Lelechenya rehabilitation center
School closures are politically sensitive in Ukraine, as orphanages are one of the few reliable job providers and also bring money to local communities, according to child coverage experts.
The Ukrainian government does not publish aggregate knowledge about its budgets. In a 2021 report, Kuleba said keeping a child in them costs more than 200,000 hryvnia (around £5,000) on average annually. By comparison, Ukraine’s GDP consistent with capita last year around £4,300, according to the World Bank.
Tanya first entered the Odessa orphanage in 2018 at the age of eight, 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.
He didn’t have the resources yet, so the state assumed the duty of transferring Tanya to the institution, Pechenyi said.
A child watches outdoor activities at the Lelechenya Center
In June, nurses accompanied Tanya on the 11-hour exercise trip west. Their caregivers said they were worried: A gesture as gentle as turning the page on an e-book can cause suffering to an autistic child.
Together with young people from nearby institutions, they were 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 Lelechenya’s rehabilitation center in Little Stork, she was crying and agitated, according to a Reuters reporter who visited her 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. “
Newcomers are unpredictable, frantic, Ambrozivna said.
However, until August, Tanya “adapted well,” the director said.
Tanya, 12, who is autistic and talks, watches other children draw with chalk on a playground at a special wish center in Odessa, Ukraine.
Reuter
Teacher Irina Nikolaeva Ogurtsova leads the youths to the basement shelter while the school’s airstrike warning is activated.
Reuter
Children climb the stairs to the basement.
Reuter
Tanya sits with other young people at the shelter.
Reuter
Tanya receives comfort from a member of the Odessa orphanage
Reuter
Staff member Oksana Kogat prepares soup in the room
Reuter
Soup is ready for lunch at Odessa orphanage
Reuter
Teacher Irina Nikolaeva Ogurtsova poses for a photo
Reuter
Olga Slivka, 18, attends a consultation at the orphanage.
Reuter
Tanya watches the other young people play
Reuter
Residents participate in a music and theater class.
Reuter
Politecina Lida, 26, in a gym
Reuter
Nurse Ekaterina Masiuk, 57, comforts citizens in the basement of the orphanage.
Reuter
Nurse Rita Barba, 52, sits with the young people at the shelter.
Reuter
An animal stuffed with the colors of the Ukrainian flag is placed on a bed at the Lelechenya (Little Stork) rehabilitation center in Dzhuriv.
Reuter
Tanya receives comfort through a nurse at Lelechenya rehabilitation center
Reuter
A child watches outdoor activities at the Lelechenya Center
Reuter
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