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REVEALING CHILDREN'S NEEDS IN FOSTER CARE PLACEMENTS. COMMENTING SOME REGULATIONS OF THE GOVERNMENT'S TARGET SOCIAL PROGRAM FOR REFORM OF THE SYSTEM OF INSTITUTIONS FOR ORPHANS AND CHILDREN WITHOUT PARENTAL CARE (APPROVED BY THE RESOLUTION OF THE CABINET OF MINISTERS OF UKRAINE ON OCTOBER 17, 2007)
Abstract
The topicality of the problem under study is determined by the necessity of changing the system of pedagogical approaches to children from orphanages during the process of their being transferred into foster families and into family-type orphanages. The objective of the article is to study the processes concerning these children's adaptation to their new social conditions. Such processes are part of the government's new social strategy initiated by the adoption of the Government's Target Social Program for Reform of the System of Institutions for Orphans and Children without Parental Care ("Gosudarstvennaya tselevaya sotsialnaya programma reformirovaniya sistemy ucherezhdeniy dlya detey-sirot i detey lishennyh roditelskoy opeki", 2007). The article also aims at studying children's psychophysical abnormalities caused by their parents' antisocial behavior leading to the
children's being placed into the boarding house. The necessity of changing the current state of affairs can be explained by the demands of the time. As the first part of the Program, the society has come to the conclusion that the approach to orphans' socialization must be changed and adapted to the modern conditions of these children's lives by using the world's and Europe's experience which has given positive results. Firm steps must be taken towards deinstitutionalization - liquidation of orphan boarding houses which for decades have been closed institutions for thousands of Ukrainian children. Therefore, the primary goal of the society is not placing children into conditions which isolate them from the outer world, but rather transferring these children into sound families. If families get support and assistance, children will stay with parents. For many years the government has neglected the opinion of orphans themselves and thought that orphans are taken proper care of because their minimum, i.e. biological, needs are satisfied. But, in fact, only thorough and comprehensive study of children's needs can guarantee their adequate development in our fast-paced world.
The principal outcome of the research is the elaboration of definite recommendations:
- in accordance with the peculiarities of a certain family (economic security, desocialization level, living conditions, etc.);
- on the basis of revealing needs of a certain child;
- taking into account the resources of the local community;
- by using modern methods and approaches.
The materials can be used in specialized and training courses for Oles Honchar Dnipro National University students specializing in social work as well as in upgrade training courses for social workers of state institutions and non-profit organizations.
Keywords
Personality socialization, deinstitutionalization, inclusive education, integration into the society, identity deprivation
AUTHOR
Gennady A. Senkevich
PhD in Social Communications, Associate Professor, Department of Social Work, Oles Honchar Dnipro National University, Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine.
72, Gagarin Avenue, Dnepropetrovsk, 49000, Ukraine.
E-mail: gen.senkevich@gmail.com
Margarita Nikolaeva
Student, Oles Honchar Dnipro National University, Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine.
72, Gagarin Avenue, Dnepropetrovsk, 49000, Ukraine.
1. Introduction
1.1. Topicality of the problem
The Ukrainian government continues to finance the system of boarding houses for orphans and then spends money on eliminating the consequences: every second leaver of such a boarding house commits a crime and every fifth one becomes homeless due to lacking necessary social skills. Orphanages for children under 3 years old are especially dangerous because children of that age need more care, love, and communication - the things that form the basis of all their future life. According to the international research
on the developmental level of children adopted from the boarding houses Miller and Hendrie, every three months of living in a boarding house causes a one-month delay in physical development. As a result, 55% of children have a motor skill developmental delay, 32% - a mental developmental delay, 43% - a speech delay, 44% have different developmental delays simultaneously. Fewer than 10% of children in orphan boarding houses are full orphans whereas others have relatives or at least one parent. Ukrainians give their children away to boarding houses themselves - because of poverty or due to the child's special needs. Orphan boarding houses are isolated from the outer world. Therefore, their leavers are not accustomed to living independently. Annually the Ukrainian budget commits approximately UAH 6 billion to orphanages, but only 16% of this money is spent on children. Experts are convinced that it is high time for Ukraine to abandon conventional orphan boarding houses and turn to family-type orphanages or inclusive education. Thus, budget funds would be spent on supporting families rather than on financing numerous staff and walls. Moreover, nearly 20% of orphanage-leavers have a criminal record and 10% commit suicides. And only 10% get integrated into the society ("V Ukraine predlagayut zakryt internaty: Zachem eto nuzhno i chto budet s sirotami", 20l6). The Government's Target Social Program for Reform of the System of Institutions for Orphans and Children without Parental Care meant to solve this problem within 10 years. This time is over, but the Program's objectives have not been reached.
1.2. Research hypothesis
The analysis of theoretical works and practical activity concerning the problem under study has shown that each child in residential care institutions for orphans and children without parental care, i.e. orphan boarding houses, has had a family experience characterized by deficiency and disruptiveness of different degree. Specialists assert that such children have all forms of deprivation: sensory, cognitive, emotional, identity deprivation (Lisina & Dubrovina, 2000, p.126). Research works demonstrate that the loss of their mother's care followed by psychological deprivation in orphan institutions adversely affects children's social, psychological, and physical health. Most of abandoned children lack personal attention and emotional encouragement needed for development. The author of the article believes that the failure to adapt and socialize under conditions of residential care can be avoided only in case the child is placed into a sound family atmosphere. The readiness of foster parents for taking care of an orphan child considerably depends on discovering the child's needs and paying attention to his/her inclinations and objects of affection. The readiness of the government is revealed through sincere intentions framed into definite and feasible social reforms.
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Theoretical and empirical methods
In order to solve the problems outlined in the research and test the hypothesis, a complex of generally scientific and psychological methods has been used: theoretical (when studying psychological literature on the subject); empirical (psychodiagnostics); mathematical-and-statistical (when processing empirical data).
2.2 Methodological Framework
The methodological framework for studying the subject in question is formed by fundamental works on issues concerning orphans' social adaptation, their educational,
employment and housing problems. These issues have been and still are researched within the sphere of family sociology by many well-known scientists, such as T.A. Gurko, G.I. Osadchaya, Y.R. Yarskaya-Smirnova, Y.M. Rybinskiy, G.V. Semya, M.I. Lisina, and many others.
Thus, M.I. Lisina points out that the necessity for a child to communicate with an adult is a basic need without which this child's normal development and socialization are impossible: "In conditions of hospitalism children reveal neither attention nor interest to adults even after 2-3 years of their life. But as soon as the pedagogue has managed to establish successful interaction with the child, the child shows great improvement in the development level in a short time span as well as forms an active attitude to people and the surrounding world" (Lisina, p. 93). T.A. Gurko underlines that "foster families receive children of different ages, and particularly numerous is the group which includes foster children of early and middle adolescence. Therefore, the foster family performs a significant role of adolescents' resocialization" (Gurko & Taseev, 2007).
The conclusions made by M. Ainsworth, J. Langmeier, Z. Matejcek, M. Lisina, V. Mukhina, A. Ruzskaya paved the way for the family-type substitute care for orphans. For example, J. Langmeier and Z. Matejcek claim that the main reason why children from orphanages suffer from maladjustment is the influence of deprivation mechanisms, such as emotional, psychic, personality, and maternal forms of deprivation (Langmeier & Matejcek, 1984, p. 54). I. Dementieva, N. Yuditseva, et al. cover the issues of social adaptation, study how orphanage-leavers find their place in life when out of the boarding-houses, and analyze the existing models of post-orphanage adaptation within the context of various specialized institutions.
So, the analysis of scholarly works has allowed forming the scientific basis of the research conducted as well as making some adjustments and predictions concerning the quality and terms of deinstitutionalization which began in Ukraine several years ago.
2.3 Research Basis
The research basis of the problem stated was Kherson, Dnipro, and Zaporizhia regions - areas which may be viewed as models of the deinstitualization process due to the results received and made public.
3. Results
For the quarter-century of Ukraine's independence nobody has really tried to solve orphans' problems. During all those years there were a great number of boarding schools serving as educational institutions, but, in fact, they were simply orphanages where children were given food and shelter as well as clothes and some essentials (those boarding houses were so-called Vlll-type special-purpose institutions). Some of them were problem-oriented, for instance, a boarding house for children who have hearing problems, a boarding house for mentally retarded children, etc. This legally approved division gave an opportunity to increase the number of already bloated workforce by involving speech language therapists, neuropathologists, and even manual therapists. Thus, in early 2000 Molochansk specialized orphan boarding school in Zaporizhia region employed handicraft instructors, nurse-dieticians, numerous stock keepers, and a supply-and-maintenance manager. The school also had its own Emergency Medical Service and even its own chief agronomist because the city council had doled out several hectares of farming land for orphans. It is interesting to note that the land was worked with the equipment of farming enterprises that had decided to contribute to the honourable cause of helping orphans. The yield obtained in autumn was sold. The money received was spent on necessary stock,
but often on the one which the staff, rather than the children, needed. Moreover, the boarding-house's pig-breeding farm not always provided the children with meat. The institution's own accounting department carefully covered up the traces of any financial misconduct connected with double financing of the boarding school.
At the time the government was very generous about giving funds to orphan boarding schools trying to satisfy the needs in almost everything. However, that financing was strictly according to norms established by special regulatory acts - a certain number of shirts, socks, pairs of shoes, or kilos of fish. Those norms were rarely changed and always without any attention to what orphans wanted themselves. It was hard to imagine girls being given deodorants or personal hygiene items which were available to their peers living in families. In total, the government financed 1.25 salary rate per each orphan child in Molochansk. Moreover, if working with "special inmates", pedagogues (teachers, instructors, deputy principals) had a bonus added to their payment amounting up to 50% of their salary rate. Taking into account that these expenses were accompanied by other ones, even more serious - heating, electricity, stock, major and everyday repairs, the sums turned out to be enormous. The illustration below shows an approximate distribution of budget funds in the orphan boarding house (Fig. 1).
How funds given to orphan boarding houses are spent
70
60
30
40
,0
20
10
■ I
0
I c/) Communal services and maintenance of buildings Food for children Clothes for children Health care for children
How funds given to orphan boarding nouses are spent
Salary Communal services and maintenance of buildings Food for children Clothes for children Health care for children
FIGURE 1
Up to some point that situation was bearable, but when communal tariffs started to rise rapidly, urgent changes had to be introduced. Besides, at that time Ukrainian boarding houses knew nothing about energy and heating efficiency. Therefore, the government
began to wonder if orphanages were cost-efficient. The second problem which urged the government to reconsider the issue of financing orphan boarding houses was orphans themselves. By the time there were absolutely no statistical data on the "contingent quality". In 20l3 the team of Children's Ombudsman (Y. Pavlenko) conducted such a research. The number of children was estimated to be 117,000.
In its time (2005-2006), the Ministry of Family, Youth, and Sports made an attempt to sort out and calculate the number of children in our country who were really parentless orphans in need of the government's care and the number of other children. It was the time when orphans were actually calculated. In 2007, for example, there were 103 thousand of such children. And in 2013 there were already 92 thousand of them. It is necessary to consider, though, that there is a war in our country - the Crimea has been annexed and some parts of Donetsk and Lugansk regions, where some of our orphan children are, are also not taken into account in the general statistics. And even without data from these regions Ukraine is reported to have approximately 90,000 children deprived of parental care. However, our orphanages house 100,000 children. And only 9,000 of them are orphans; the others have parents. The general picture is shown below (Fig.2).
Children deprived of parental care
Orphans Children in the status of "temporary orphanage" Children living in socially dangerous conditions
Children placed in institutions Children placed in foster families Homeless and uncared-for children Children subjected to family violence and living in unacceptable conditions
Children whose biological parents died or deprived of parental rights Children whose parents are in medical institutions, suspected and accused of committing a crime, or serve time in prisons Children whose parents evade their obligations
FIGURE 2 - GROUPS OF CHILDREN DEPRIVED OF PARENTAL CARE
Thus, out of 100 children living in boarding schools there are only 10 social orphans. They are taken from dysfunctional families by social services who see, for example, that
parents regularly misuse alcohol and do not take care of their children. Another case is abusive treatment of children in families. Under these circumstances there is a special procedure of taking a child out of the family. First, the child is placed in a center of social and psychological rehabilitation (so-called, shelter). Then the parents must be deprived of parental rights - and the child receives a status of the one who is deprived of parental care and is then placed into an orphan boarding school. If the government had moved along the path of providing real and effective help to families that happened to face difficult circumstances, there would be 90% fewer children living in orphanages - even before the social reform in Ukraine.
The next important problem of the boarding houses is getting boarding-school leavers employed. This problem has been ignored for decades by everyone, except a few administrators of these special-purpose institutions - truly honorable pedagogues putting their heart and soul into what they do. Using their own contacts and asking their own acquaintances for a favour, they got some of their graduates employed. But such cases can be viewed as exceptions rather than rules.
Social or antisocial boarding school?
Since Soviet times it has been an accepted fact that orphan boarding schools fully perform the function of personality socialization and adequately adapt children to living in the surrounding world when they are out of the boarding-house walls. Of course, it is not so. It cannot be denied, however, that something has been done in this respect anyway. In Molochansk, Preslav, and Kamenskoye of Zaporizhia region the curriculum included special courses, such as social and household orientation (SHO), which gave children an idea what living conditions of an average Ukrainian family were. The classroom was an imitation of a two-room flat with all its attributes, which not only gave an opportunity to show children all basic elements of household culture, but also helped them become active participants of family relationships by practically applying the skills acquired. For example, they were taught how to lay a table or organize a party for younger children. In some way, those lessons turned out to be useful, but unfortunately they had nothing to do with the most important thing - communication within the family which is an inherent attribute of a real family life. However, even in the Soviet period this "orphan boarding house" model of working with mentally retarded children was considered efficient enough. Here is what the researcher Valentina Voronkova writes about social and household orientation lessons in her teacher's manual named "Social and Household Orientation of 5-9 Grade Pupils in the VIII-Type Specialized (Remedial) Comprehensive School":
"A SHO classroom with well-equipped thematic zones is the organizational basis of the teacher's work and pupils' educational activity. The conditions in the classroom are favourable for increasing the productivity of the remedial-and-educational process, improving pupils' cognitive activity, developing their self-care skills along with conscious self-discipline. Lessons in such a classroom help the teacher to show pupils in which reallife situations and activities they can apply the knowledge and skills acquired. By modeling certain life situations at SHO lessons, where children can put into practice their skills, it becomes possible to establish distinct association between knowledge gained at school and real-world problems which must be solved outside school. The greater variety of reallife situations the classroom reproduces, the more the teacher can rely on the pupil to use the knowledge received in a new, changed situation, which is always especially difficult for mentally retarded children. While doing tasks in specially prepared conditions, pupils develop new needs and interests which, over time, increase in number cultivating a personality. There appears a feeling of your work being useful, which, in its turn, creates a positive emotional background and encourages efforts to be active. The child's active attitude to the reality develops curiosity. Thus, the classroom conditions give an opportunity not only train and educate, but also remediate intellectual and
cognitive deviations of pupils in the Vlll-type specialized (remedial) school. Having favourable conditions, children gain solid and deep knowledge and acquire skills how to employ this knowledge in practice. Since the main factor in the child's development is education, the conditions in which this education takes place are vitally important" (Voronkova & Kazakova).
The author of this article absolutely disagrees with the statement quoted above because if one speaks about personality socialization of mentally retarded children (usually, with such diagnoses as " schizophrenia " and "oligophrenia"), it is necessary to take into consideration one thing - these children cannot acquire "everyday" skills for their entire life since the peculiarities of their disease development will not make it possible. As A.R. Luriya emphasizes, these children have undergone, either in their intrauterine period or in their early childhood, a serious brain disease which has changed their cerebral tissue and disturbed their superior nerve processes. It is characteristic of them to have psychological development disorder in general, which becomes abnormal and prevents these children from mastering forms of complex cognition, which is connected with distraction and generalization. What an ordinary child can do naturally every day is often insurmountable for an oligophrenic patient.
Speaking about the everyday environment, which we call domestic, it is worth underlining that from a very tender age children are usually accustomed to a certain routine which involves the simplest activities (washing hands before meals, taking off dirty shoes on coming home, etc.). However, mentally retarded children need to be constantly reminded of all these things. Moreover, householding presupposes more complex, often economic, operations, e.g. calculating money left till salary comes or paying back a loan. The operations already require a mathematical approach and prospect-oriented thinking. Therefore, no "temporary-type" lessons, such as SHO ones, cannot cultivate these practical skills.
Opponents of this conclusion may disagree with the author and ground their arguments on M.S. Pevzner's theory who provides a clinical classification based on the structure of a defect. She underlines that oligophrenic patients even of the same clinical group have different educational capabilities, which is connected with the depth and development level of the disorder. Children who have a mild disorder are characterized by the steadiness of primary nervous processes. Cognitive activity deviations are not accompanied by serious dysfunction of analyzers. These children's emotional-and-volition sphere is comparably safe. They can fulfill a purpose-oriented task when the task is clear and easy to do. So, in a habitual situation their behavior is almost normal. Despite this fact, though, they are not capable of doing mathematical operations which other children of their age can easily do. But such capabilities are essential in everyday life, even for children.
The author of this article can give numerous examples from the lives of the Molochansk boarding-school orphans when they were not able to count the change received from a shop-assistant or failed to calculate correctly how much they needed to pay back to friends who had lent them money. And those were small sums of money. Adults often took advantage of the fact that the children did not have necessary skills and deceived the kids for whom natural, "moneyless" exchange seemed the most reliable one. Can such children securely integrate into the society? Of course, they can't. That is why the Soviet model, which we want to escape now, cannot be called efficient. Soviet boarding houses were always closed areas and scientists who managed to prove that those institutions could be beneficial were undoubtedly trying to please the ruling government.
With full confidence it can be asserted that orphanages were and still are a territory of unfreedom. Even their location indicates it - as a rule, they are situated on the outskirts of some locality, placed in isolation as if in order to minimize the children's contact with
the outer world. And if a child happened to have a necessity to attend some music or arts school, it would not be easy to put it into practice - nobody would agree to cover 5-6 kilometers to take the child to the classes. Under such circumstances, it is obvious that those children do not develop as children do in ordinary families. The limited space along with absence of the right to choose and satisfy your own needs often leads to psychological deprivation. "Psychological deprivation manifests itself in an inability to study according to the regular school curriculum. They have poor academic performance because most of them have sensory underdevelopment and intellectual inadequacy. As a result, children living outside a family experience problems with school adaptation characterized by a distinct tendency to grow and their motivation to study weakens" (Shchurkova, 2004, p. 85). Such signs are viewed as deviations from children's normal behavior and these deviations often develop into overt aggression.
According to V.S. Mukhina, the main reasons for the children's deviational behavior lie in their unrealized "need for love and acknowledgement, which leads to the deformation of the child's personality" (Mukhina, 76). Due to the fact that their communication experience develops incorrectly, these children often have a negative attitude and become aggressive towards other people. Unrealized needs in parental love and acknowledgement cause the formation of deviational behavior, ineducability, individual developmental difficulties, emotional tension, and frustration. They may also cause the development of mendacity and envy. The affective reactions stated above (pugnacity, quarrelsomeness, aggression, rudeness) are considered by L.S. Slavina to be a protective response to the fact that the vitally important needs are not satisfied. And such a response allows children not to view their capabilities as degraded.
The aggression expressed by boarding-house orphans may be also based on fear. Many psychoanalysts share this idea. C. Büttner names two most frequent reasons for aggressiveness in the early age: "First of all, this is a fear of being injured, hu rt, or attacked. Secondly, these are offences, psychological traumas, or even attacks which have already been experienced by the child" (Büttner, 1991, p. 164). It is worth mentioning that in the early age unconscious aggressive impulses manifest themselves indirectly finding realization in children's fantasies and games whose contents can be analyzed in order to reveal the protective mechanisms which the child's "ego" resorts to.
In Ukraine, the child can get to the orphan boarding house by one of three ways. The first one is the desire of the child's parents, when the family's finances are very scarce or if the parents have an antisocial lifestyle. In such a case, they write an application and the child is placed into the orphanage though he/she is not an orphan actually. The government provides for the child and the parents continue to abuse alcohol. The second way to the boarding house is the case when the child becomes disabled, especially if the disability is complex and requires specialized social care. Such children can stay in the boarding house up to the age of 35. The third case is when boarding-house workers search for their future inmates because they are personally interested in it - if the boarding house is not fully populated, it will not be financed. They visit large families with many children and suggest, or sometimes even insist, that their children should be given away to their institution.
Thus, in an interview to some journalists the programme director of «SOS - Children's Villages Ukraine» Darya Kasyanova explained why one of Dnipro region institutions had been closed. The inspection estimated the children's needs and analyzed the statuses of those children. A social organization communicated with each child and it turned out that all those children were from the same area. There was no school there and the boarding house served as a school where children lived for 11 years. So, the government funds were spent only because it was convenient for a few indifferent officials. And the child ren's lives were, of course, of no interest to them.
"I have a certain allergy to boarding-house institutions and it is connected to the fact that nothing good happens there. If boarding-house leavers, especially adult ones, are talked to, it is told that out of a class only a couple of them usually stay alive. One starts shooting up, another gets to drinking whereas some may go and hang themselves. If we speak about successful projects, we must admit that things like that do not happen after successful projects," concludes Darya Kasyanova ("0 nasilii v internatah, "armii" potentsialnyh sirot i retseptah dlya Ukrainy", 2016).
Since 2007 (having adopted the Government's Target Social Program for Reform of the System of Institutions for Orphans and Children without Parental Care), the Ukrainian government has understood at last that to finance orphan boarding houses is a road to nowhere and that it is necessary to take care of the rising generation not on the paper but in real life by revealing and satisfying their needs. Therefore, even the previous government started to take urgent measures to change the existing situation for the better. Too urgently, according to the author of this article.
If the official statistics can be trusted, in eight months of 2013, Dnipropetrovsk region managed to become a leader among other regions by the number of orphan children placed in foster families and family-type orphanages. Every year the number of children in boarding houses was supposed to be 20% lower. By 2016 all children should have been living with foster parents. That is what the local government planned, or, which is more correct, spurred. In vain.
There are many examples of urgently implemented commissions to reduce the number of boarding houses. For instance, according to mass media, executive authorities in Kherson placed children with hearing and speech problems in foster families. Those children were taken from a specialized boarding house to a village which does not even have a medical assistant. However, little attention is paid to such things. And the government is unlikely to interfere. Officials cut down expenses. Every child in a boarding house requires UAH 100,000 of budget funds per year, i.e. approximately UAH 6,500 per month. If the child is in a foster family, a monthly payment is only two minimum living wages. Profitable? Undoubtedly. Plus: the Soviet government farsightedly placed many boarding houses in resort areas. Business is panic-stricken. Land is "being wasted"... ("Likvidatsiya detskih internatov", 2013). Only three years have passed and it has become clear that there is no need to hurry in such a sensitive matter as guardianship, fostering, or adoption of children.
4. Discussions
When preparing social work specialists in Ukrainian universities or/and upgrade training institutions, attention is paid to assessment of the family's and child's needs. It is considered that this assessment must be based on the following principles:
- concentration on the child and his/her development;
- "environmental friendliness" (i.e., most probably, good intentions - the author);
- equal opportunities, respect for the client's cultural peculiarities and environment;
- involvement of all participants of the assessment;
- both openness and confidentiality simultaneously;
- foreseeable further work with children and families;
- focus on strong points and identification of weak ones;
- long-term planning rather than relying on one-time event;
- priority of substantiated facts instead of guesswork;
- approach of inter-institutional cooperation.
Moreover, it is insistently recommended to take into account the client's views and habits in order to satisfy his/her needs in full. In addition, it is advised that if it is possible,
family members and guardians should also be involved into the assessment procedure because they are valuable sources of information.
The whole complex of needs can be divided into three large groups: the child's developmental needs, factors of the family and environment, and the parents' potential. The first group includes health, education, emotional development and behavior, self-actualization, family and social relationships, social representation, and self-care skills. The second group comprises the resources of the community, social integration of the family, the family's income, employment, and living conditions, relatives, the family's history and activity. The third group presupposes elementary care, security, emotional warmth, stimulation, stability, life guidance and restrictions.
As we can see, the boarding-house institution can adequately meet only half of these needs. Therefore, it is vitally important now to speak out about the necessity of reconsidering the governmental family-and-children oriented policy in general in compliance with the principles stated in the Constitution.
5. Conclusion
In the author's opinion, Ukraine has seen democratic transformations which can fundamentally change the current situation. Since 2016 the civil society has finally realized that each child should be treated individually, neither without averaging his/her needs nor without standardizing the help provided by the government and local officials. First of all, the greatest expectations are placed on the law «On decentralization of power» which opens various opportunities to territorial c ommunities. The newly formed local governmental bodies must not only get engaged in solving technical problems of their territories (roads, communal services, energy efficiency), but must also pay significant attention to the social sphere, in particular, maternity and childhood issues When all boarding houses become the property of the territorial communities, people will have to determine the fates of orphans - without speeding up events and with due consideration of each child's interests. The institute of foster families and family-type orphanages should be formed not only according to the "do-no-harm" principle, but also in consideration of future results aimed at bringing up a fully-fledged member of society. With this aim in mind, it is necessary to prepare an appropriate educational basis. The recently adopted law «On Tutorship» opens, in this respect, a wide range of prospects.
At the same time "The Government's new social strategy initiated by the adoption of the Government's Target Social Program for Reform of the System of Institutions for Orphans and Children without Parental Care" is sped up due to the lack or complete absence of funding and, in pursuit of economizing budget funds, such concepts as "family's needs" and "child's needs" are completely or partially neglected. The Program has proved its absolute inefficiency and needs to be reconsidered.
The society itself should get these issues under its control understanding its responsibility for the younger generation.
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Büttner, C. (1991). Zhyt s agressivnymi detmi [Life with aggressive children]. Moscow: Pedagogika.
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RISKS ON PARTIALLY ORDERED SETS
Abstract
The urgency of the problem under study is due to the wide prevalence of economic and political systems, which are characterized not by numerical values, but by partial orders on sets of outcomes. The purpose of the article is to illustrate the possibility of using a modern mathematical apparatus to study risk in the presence of only a partial order on the set of system development outcomes. The main approaches to the study of this problem are the methods of game theory and probability-theoretic constructions. Approaches to the construction of risk models in economic systems described in terms of sets of non-numeric nature and some partial orders defined on these sets are considered on practical examples. Materials of the article may be useful in the study of both political and economic risks in conditions of insufficient and / or incomplete information, in the conditions of restrictions on orders definitions on groups of probability spaces.
