But in Britain, for example, the principle of keeping the best interests of the child and the importance of the permanence of his environment means that the biological parent, who was completely absent from the life of the child, does not have any preferential rights to return him to himself.

For example, a parent was in prison, did not contact the child, was not interested in him, the child was brought up in a foster family for all 3 years of his life. In such a situation, the biological parent does not have priority rights to his child, he cannot return him to himself only on the grounds that he is the father. Because the child already has an established environment, relationships, why on earth should he be transferred to an actual stranger?

2/3 of cases handled by social workers end with the return of children to their families. They note that working with the family is most effective in the first 3-6 months after opening a case. But the work can take longer if needed.

We are very glad that these data echo the conclusions that we made based on the results of work in the Smolensk region. Our psychologists and social educators work with children who are already permanently in the orphanage, but even in this case there are successful stories of returning children to their birth families. And the less the child is in the institution, the greater the chance to return him.

And this means that if you go to shelters and rehabilitation centers where children go temporarily, or to family support services where parents go in a crisis, then the chance to save families will be even higher.

If, nevertheless, the family cannot cope, then a special court is convened (the judges participating in it also undergo retraining and deal exclusively with similar issues), and there a decision can be made to establish state supervision of the child and move him to be raised in another family.

Biological parents do not lose their rights. Just for a while, state law prevails over parental law.

That is, you cannot deprive your parental rights. There is no such thing! State supervision over the family may be established. But a parent is always a parent. Exception: the case of adoption - then parental rights are completely transferred to another family.

In Britain, if a family cannot raise a child, first of all, his relatives are searched for, even neighbors, teachers, families of close school friends - the entire usual social circle of the child is moved. If it is impossible to arrange with friends, then a foster family is selected.

Recently, adoption is considered an extremely undesirable form of child placement, because it violates his rights - it breaks his connection with the birth family.

More than 75 percent of children who do not live with their parents are raised in foster families. However, the blood family does not completely disappear from the child's life: if communication with the family is possible, if it is safe for the child, then it occurs in a limited way.

In Russia, most of these children still live in institutions - this is the main form of placement for orphans in our country. And, as a rule, communication with relatives, unfortunately, is interrupted.

Our foundation is in the process of reuniting orphans with their relatives, because without this the problem with orphans cannot be solved. Our experience of working with children in an orphanage shows that guardianship authorities often do nothing to find relatives, although they are there and could maintain contact with the children.

The main requirement for a foster family is a free room. A foster child must have their own room. At the same time, more than three foster children cannot be placed in one family at the same time, even if conditions allow.

One of the priorities is not to separate brothers and sisters if possible. What if there are four of them? Only three can be arranged in a family ... Each case is considered individually. Sometimes priorities conflict with each other. Let's say one of them has needs that can't be met outside of London.

And in London there are not many families ready to accept several children - there are not so many free rooms. Assess what is more important: keeping the brother and sister together or separating them to provide for the special needs of one of them - for example, a special school. Priority is determined by the municipality.

A social pedagogue is appointed to curate the case. And if there are several children, then there are several curators - for each child. The case of each child is considered separately, because even in the same family, children can have a big difference in age and not communicate much, or, for example, some children lived with their grandparents, others lived with their father and mother, and also not very familiar.

The needs of the individual child are considered. It is the social service that determines what services he needs: maybe he needs a speech therapist, or a psychologist, or some kind of special medical supervision. Therefore, when looking for a substitute family, the state is looking for the possibility of maximum satisfaction of these needs. Including, they try to preserve as much as possible - if it is safe for the child - his environment: so that he stays to live in the same area of ​​the city where he lived, goes to the same school, so that, in addition to changing adults caring for him, his life changes minimally.

Photo: londonfamilyphotography.co.uk

In Britain there are state and non-state agencies for preparing and accompanying adoptive parents - foster agencies. It is very important that the functions of preparation and support are combined in one place!

This means that those people who prepare the family for a new status and assess its resources accompany this family when orphans come to it, they are also responsible for the quality of placement (the length of stay of children in the family, their well-being in it, etc.). That is, people initially have an idea about the family, contact is established with it, there is an understanding of what can be expected from whom, they are emotionally oriented towards each other. It turns out that they evaluate and prepare the family to receive children and are responsible for the quality of this assessment and preparation!

While we have schools for foster parents, this is still a separate institution that issues a piece of paper about passing. On the formal basis of the presence of this piece of paper, the guardianship authorities give the go-ahead for the adoption of a child, not even being really familiar with this family.

Every family that has a free room and the necessary conditions can apply to the foster agency and become adoptive parents. The first face-to-face acquaintance with representatives of guardianship authorities takes place on the territory of a potential foster family. This makes it possible for the family to feel calm and confident, and for the specialist to get much more information about how they live.

Next comes the stage of collecting documents - it is carried out not by the family, but by representatives of the agency.

The specialist seeks information from the police, the place of work, and the clinic, and collects feedback from neighbors, friends, relatives. And the family is just waiting - the process takes up to 8 months.

Then they take a basic course of study - 8 or 10 blocks. But in general, foster families are constantly learning. Let's say you took a 7-year-old kid, but time passes - and he is already a teenager: other questions and problems arise before you.

Foster families are in constant contact with the agency. The social worker visits the family at least 14 times a year, 12 of them by agreement with the family, and 2 times without warning. This is a standardized approach.

The foster parent keeps a diary about the child's life. Let's say: “I came from school; got sick; today he communicated well with the neighbor's children, ”and he is certified by a social worker weekly. That is, the contact between the family and the social worker is very tight!

The average age of adoptive parents is 55 years old.

No maximum age limit.

We were told about an elderly lady, an employee of the agency, through which more than 100 children passed. It is clear that she does not accommodate small children for a long period, but she is a parent who can take children in emergency cases for short-term placement.

We have a queue of adoptive parents who want to take home blue-eyed, healthy babies from a well-to-do family - that is, without “bad genetics”. In England, if a family sets such conditions at an interview, they are told:

“You know, we have no need for raising such children. The main contingent is teenagers, children of migrants, antisocial children. So if you're clearly targeting blue-eyed girls, I'm sorry - we can't help you."

They are not even taken to teach - such parents are simply not taken into this system. Those who are hired are ready to cover real needs, and not satisfy their desire to raise a certain type of children.

What kind of children will be given to one or another foster family is determined by the results of training and interaction of the family with a specialist. Suppose parents want to take a teenager, but during the conversations it turns out that they are emotionally unstable people and will not be able to resist some kind of aggressive manifestations that occur in adolescence. So, they will accommodate the kids. Or, for example, a family does not mind taking a child with special needs, but their house is not suitable for him - there is no elevator or no ramp. They, of course, will not give such a child to raise.

Each family has a profile. There is a base where their “professional qualifications” are indicated - what type of children and for how long they are ready to accept. For example, there is an emergency type of placement: when a child is removed from a dysfunctional family, he is in a state of stress, and you should try to calm him down and be prepared for the fact that he will not make contact. Or this is a short-term withdrawal from the family - while the parents are solving some problems - for 1-2 months: in this case, you should be prepared for the fact that you cannot become attached to him tightly, that you will have to return him to your parents.

The task of the agency is to determine these categories for each family. That is, it turns out that not a child is selected for a family, but a family for a child! Each case of a social worker is a case of a child, not a family.

There is no mystery of adoption, this is considered unacceptable, and the work is to leave no chance for the child to grow up without knowing that he was adopted.

This is why it is said from the very beginning, the child grows up with this information, without perceiving it as a kind of shock. This is constantly talked about with him, in different ways, depending on age, but for him this is never news.

It excludes the situation when, in adolescence, a person suddenly accidentally finds out that he is not native, and that his close people have been lying to him all his life. The consequences of such news - psychological trauma and a break with relatives - are very difficult to overcome later. And when a child grows up knowing that he is not his own, there is no trauma, and this does not interfere with emotional closeness with foster parents.

Foster parents receive a salary and money to support the child. But at the same time, foster families must have an alternative source of income, that is, they must not depend on payments for the child.

Weekly payments come from the municipality - from the place where a dysfunctional family is identified. The social worker, together with the family, draws up a financial plan for managing children's money - calculates how much the child will go for pocket expenses, and how much they should save as his savings for the future. The money for the maintenance of the child fully covers the costs of the family for him, the purpose of the plan is to show how they can be managed without limiting the child, but without involving the alternative income of the adoptive parent. No one asks for checks!

But in the communication, which takes place at least once a month, the social worker looks at how the child is dressed, what his room looks like, what he eats. If something worries the specialist, he can increase the number of visits to the family, come without the consent of the family, for example, at lunchtime - to see what the child is fed, or during joint family events - to see how they communicate, what emotions they have relation to each other.

As far as I understood, complaints: “Yeah, you take children into the family not for love, but for money!” – are also heard in Britain. But experts answer them: “We select foster parents, we control them, we are the same who taught them: we know these people. And then, there are a lot of easier ways to make money than looking after abandoned, difficult children.”

In our country, due to the separation of the functions of checking the family and its support, abuse is possible: when a family from the village, having no other source of income, takes orphans to raise. And at the same time, a negative attitude (and often from their own guardianship!) - “taken for money” - haunts many wonderful families who put their heart and soul into raising adopted children.

Any foster family is hired. She does not have full rights to the child and cannot make a number of decisions for him.

This rule is now being reviewed, adjusted in Britain, because it causes some problems. For example, it turned out that foster families have to coordinate too much with the municipality, which worsens the situation of children.

The class is traveling and the foster parent must apply to the municipality for permission to send the child with the class. While the approvals are underway, everyone has already left! Or a parent can't let a foster child go to a friend's sleepover. Now the British are reviewing this situation so that foster moms and dads have more freedom, and such restrictions do not worsen the position of adopted children relative to blood.

Since the family is rented, the issue of moving to another city is also coordinated with the municipality. It is preferable that the family moves with the child, of course, but if there are no conditions in the new city to meet his needs, a refusal may follow. The family must be checked at the foster agency in the new location, all information about them is transferred there. And the municipality must give its consent to the move.

Parents who, for some reason, cannot take care of the child on their own, can be placed in foster families. For example, young parents: a 15-year-old orphan girl and her newborn child.

We had such cases in the Smolensk region. In one case, a girl who had recently given birth from an orphanage, along with a boyfriend, the father of the child, ended up in a foster family, but did not take root there - apparently, it was difficult for them to adjust to the family way after so many years in the orphanage. And in another case, a girl from the institution lives with her baby in a foster family.

But we consider such situations as a special case, out of the ordinary, and there - the possibility of such an arrangement is taken into account, it is assessed whether certain adoptive parents are ready to accept such teenagers. That is, in our country, first a case occurs, and then a family is searched for it, and their families are prepared for such cases.

If a child does not take root in a foster family, if he has such complex psychological characteristics or disorders that no efforts of social services help, he is placed in an institution. Ours is an orphanage. But this is not some institution far from the city.

This is an ordinary house on an ordinary street, without any markings - it does not stand out in any way. Up to 6 (!) adolescent children live there, who have already had to go through a rather difficult life path: some of them participated in crimes, were members of gangs, some were involved in drug trafficking, some were engaged in self-mutilation - they inflicted injuries, there are children who have been sexually abused and exploited, children who often run away from foster families and have problems with the law.

The main task of this orphanage is to help such children to believe in themselves.

They were abandoned by their families and adoptive parents, they have low self-esteem, they feel worthless. Specialists in the orphanage work so that such children accept themselves as they are, accept the circumstances of their lives and everything that happened in it, learn to cope with their emotions, manage their lives, behavior, money, learn to choose friends correctly and, most importantly, merged into normal life.

In especially severe cases, the child goes to an orphanage with tutors, but in order to still go to study where everyone studies, get a profession where everyone gets it, learn to live in the real world, and not in an artificially created for his space. There are no special schools at the orphanage; children go to ordinary educational institutions.

An important condition for raising difficult teenagers, even in an institution, is respect for their boundaries and freedom.

Although difficult teenagers with a criminal record wear a special police bracelet to control their movements. However, personal freedom is respected.

So a child's room is his space, where an adult cannot enter without knocking. We often have the director of the orphanage leading the inspectors or volunteers through all the rooms: “Meet the children!”, And this happens several times a week. Right there - we were not even offered to come in, with or without a knock. There are no attempts to invade their personal space!

Children are given pocket money, but if they break the rules, they can spend it only under supervision. The amount of pocket money depends on their behavior: let's say no one forces children to clean their room, but everyone knows that if you don't clean the room, the amount of pocket money will be less. That is, instead of punishment - choice.

12 caregivers for 4 children, two of them are with the children at night and three during the day. In our sponsored orphanage, the role of an educator is very often performed by a video camera, which kills the meaning of the home conditions that they are trying to create there. We often take a formal approach.

In 2015, the Decree of the Government No. 481 of the Russian Federation “On the activities of organizations for orphans” appeared, and it, in particular, implies the creation of conditions in the institution that are close to family ones. But this respect for the child's personal space is still in its infancy.

It is believed that our guardianship system is about 50 years behind the British in development. But it was gratifying to know that this was not entirely true. The British system itself began to change relatively recently - the so-called Children's Act came into force only in 1989, that is, less than 30 years ago.

Today our country is beginning to move in the same direction, but work often begins at the moment when the child has already entered the institution, and not at the moment when some crisis has just begun in the family.

Decree No. 481, which appeared in 2015, essentially changes the role of the orphanage in a child's life, positions it as a temporary device, which should also be minimally different from a family stay. But the main goal is to stop being in an orphanage and be perceived as a normal, stable situation.

We already have an understanding of the benefits of a child's life in a family, and not in an institution, we have already come to the topic of preserving the birth family. But ideologically and everywhere this has not yet been accepted: it is still believed that collective education is sometimes better than family education, that a good orphanage is better than a poor family.

In our country, unfortunately, the functions of guardianship authorities are reduced to control - there is actually no assistance and support. And the foster family, raising a child, is faced with a huge number of issues that develop into difficulties - they have no one to go to with this, so as not to get hit on the head, not to achieve increased attention to them from the guardianship authorities and the removal of the child, but to get help. The results of the work of our club of foster families in Safonovo shows that very often psychological support is enough for the family to have the strength to overcome the problem.

Prepared by Valeria Mikhailova

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Compliance with the laws and traditions of the country you have moved to is a completely logical and reasonable requirement. What about raising your own children? Sometimes educational measures that seem normal in the CIS countries can be perceived in Britain as an offense and lead to disastrous consequences. Portal "Abroad" tells what you need to know about English social services and how to behave in case of problems with them

Adaptation to another culture and traditions is considered one of the main problems of immigrants at first. Especially in such a distinctive country as Great Britain. Sometimes this process can last for years, turning into a protracted nostalgia for the homeland. However, even in the case of quickly getting used to a new life, people from the CIS countries (and not only them) are very careful about their own traditions, trying not to forget about their roots.

Views on the upbringing of children well illustrate the differences in mentality among residents of the CIS countries and the UK. Try to tell our compatriot that he is raising a child incorrectly or should not scold him! At best, you will be advised to mind your own business. In Britain, things are somewhat different.

If your neighbors suddenly feel that you are being too strict with your child, raising your voice to him, or even leaving him at home unattended for several hours, they may well complain about you to social services. The trouble is that the employees of the British services for the protection of children's rights, unlike their colleagues in the CIS countries, are very zealous in their duties. Yes, and the legislation in England is not like ours: the issues of raising children are considered here not only as an intra-family matter, but also as a state matter.

In general, the obligations of parents to care for a child in the UK are not much different from the requirements in the CIS countries. However, what we have written only on paper, in Britain is a mandatory norm. On the Web, you can easily find many terrible stories about the deprivation of the parental rights of quite trustworthy people by the British authorities.

So let's take a look at a small but important list of parenting in the UK:

• provide a home for the child;
• provide proper care for the child;
• name the child and agree on name changes;
• consent to the treatment of the child;
• choose and provide for the education of the child;
• discipline a child;
• look after the child's property;
• provide financial support for the child.

If it seems to social services that parents are not coping with their duties, a very unpleasant and complicated procedure for the restriction or deprivation of parental rights begins.

What to do in such a situation?

In the case of foreigners, local authorities and the court can and should take into account some cultural differences, but this clause does not always help.

Negative outcome of the case: what's next?

In the worst case for the parents, the court decides to issue a care order. Then a decision is made where the child will live. It can be left with one of the parents, relatives, friends and other persons whom the child knows.

If there are no suitable candidates, local authorities send the child to foster parents (foster parent) or to an orphanage. This can be either temporary or long term. Foster caregivers are carefully selected by the local authorities, but their marital status does not play any role: caregivers can be married couples, single men or women, and same-sex couples.

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