A FEW WORDS ABOUT ABANDONED CHILDREN

Moving children out of state children's homes and into ordinary families has been a topic of discussion for a long time in Azerbaijan. Until now nothing has been done about it, but it looks as though things might be about to change for the better. Last year head of state Ilham Aliyev confirmed by decree the State Programme on Deinstitutionalization, that is, on getting children out of children's homes and into families, for 2006 to 20015. And now the programme is at last being put into action.

The introduction to the programme says that at present there are around 22,000 children in special educational institutions, who are deprived of parents and need special care. The large number of orphans is the result of the Armenian aggression, the low standard of living of refugee families and also of other social factors. The aim of the programme is to create conditions for the well-rounded, harmonious development of children.

The programme envisages getting children out of state institutions and into families, drawing up mechanisms for social protection for these children and protecting their rights. Children's homes and boarding schools should gradually be turned into centres providing family services, and professional training is planned for the staff of these institutions. The programme is expected to minimise the number of children brought up in state institutions and to increase the number of children moved into families. The programme will be financed from the state budget and will make use of technical and financial assistance from international donor organisations and other sources.

Mummy, don't leave me

Every day six-year-old Ali asks the care staff at one of the capital's orphanages when his mother will come and get him. He has never seen his mother, as she gave him up at birth. She was not married. After the child was born, she decided that he would be a burden for her and just erased him from her life. Ali is too young to feel hurt that he has been abandoned, but he already knows that a normal family is mum, dad and the children living under one roof. The boy looks up into the face of every woman that he doesn't know who comes to the children's home, thinking that they have come to get him and that at last he will be at home, where it is always warm and comfy and where he will be surrounded by tender loving care.

There's no denying that the boy's chances of getting a family are fading every year, as our compatriots are not keen to adopt children. This is mainly to do with the unstable economic situation and the numerous bureaucratic constraints. If people do decide to adopt, then they prefer young babies or one to two-year-olds at most.

The children in the babies' home are a little luckier, if that word can used at all in this context. The chief doctor at babies' home No 1, Nahayat Aliyeva, says that their home has young children up to the age of three. Once the babies turn three, they are sent to children's homes across the country. The doctor said that many of the children are adopted before they leave the home.

"The adoption department first finds out the family's financial position and also the psychological health of the adoptive parents," Nahayat Aliyeva said. "Some potential adopters try to find out to the last detail the child's background - for example, was the child's mother a "loose" woman or an alcoholic. But I think that this isn't really the right approach to this sensitive issue. Everyone has known for a long time that a child's mother is not the woman who gives birth to him, but the one who brings him up, and the child will have the values which his adoptive parents cultivated in him."

Nahayat Aliyeva said that quite often recently unmarried women had adopted children in the intention of bringing them up alone, of course, if they have the necessary accommodation and a steady income.

The doctor said that nothing can replace a mother's warmth, even though the babies' home has everything necessary - clothes, food and qualified medical help.

Deinstitutionalization is the Future

Adoption has become a hot topic recently. This is largely because an increasing number of celebrities are doing it. Moreover, there is a trend in the West for young families not to have their own children because there are so many abandoned children who need adoption. It can also happen that a happy family plans to have one or two of their own children and to adopt an orphan. Parental instincts are strong.

Adoption has taken on a global scale in Europe. Around 15,000 couples a year in Germany try to adopt and this number exceeds the number of orphans in the country's children's homes.

There are no children's homes in the USA, they simply don't exist. There are just temporary shelters which house a child who has suddenly lost his parents until a family is chosen for him. There is a real adoption boom in the USA. A new special holiday even appeared on the national calendar a few years ago - Adoptive Parents' Day. On this day in many towns adoptive families take part in festivals and marches - a splendid, colourful show of proud parents and their happy children.

Our country is different, as are the other former Soviet republics. The institution of adoption in Azerbaijan is not well developed at all. It cannot be said that many families try to adopt children from the orphanages. It is understandable that adopting a child is a big responsibility, but many potential adoptive parents have a range of reasons for doubt, for example, genetic illnesses and alcoholism. These fears are not groundless at all, because there really are only a few "absolutely healthy" children amongst the orphans. And there's plenty in the adoption process to prompt doubts: the system is mired in bureaucracy so it takes a long time to go through all the stages. As well as economic reasons and the imperfect legislation, society's ambivalent attitude towards families who adopt should not be forgotten. This is why most parents hide adoption as a secret.

Out of the many ways of caring for orphaned children (guardianship, SOS children's villages, foster families) adoption is the best for creation of a new family: the child takes the parents' name, has the right to accommodation, and his psychological and social state correspond to that of ordinary children brought up in a family. This is why the deinstitutionalization programme is very important for Azerbaijan.

When will the happy future begin?

It has long been realised in the developed countries of the world that that the best place for a child is in a family, so these countries have different alternatives to children's homes and boarding schools - foster families, family centres etc. As well as getting children out of orphanages and into families, our national deinstitutionalization programme also proposes creating alternative institutions to orphanages. A Centre to Support Mother and Child recently opened in the village of Shuvalan as part of the programme, the third such centre in Azerbaijan. The first centre was opened in Mingacavir and the second in Goranboy. The centres were set up with the help of USAID (the American Agency for International Development) and the support of Save the Children and United Aid for Azerbaijan. 

The main purpose of the three centres is to care for and support children with special needs. The centres also work with families to tackle factors that lead to institutionalisation. They support families in finding the financial means needed to tackle complex life situations and help to bring up difficult children. UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, is active in helping our country implement the programme.

Azerbaijani Education Minister Misir Mardanov has said that it will take quite some time for the deinstitutionalization programme to be fully implemented. He said that the programme is already under way and has several priorities. "It is impossible to say that in two or three years' time there won't be a single children's home left in our country, as there are countries that have had similar programmes for decades and still have the problem of abandoned children," the minister said. "All the developed Western countries have gone through a deinstitutionalization process and this took them a long time. It took 60 years in the USA, 30 years in England and our country must manage the reforms in a shorter period of time." He said that every child in an orphanage needs an individual approach, as there are disabled children, orphans and orphans with living parents, and it would not be right to look at them all in the same light.

Ombudsman Elmira Suleymanova says for her part that despite the importance of the programme it has some omissions which leave many questions unanswered. For example, as of today in Azerbaijan there are around 240 children who have been given to families but nobody monitors their life in their adopted family, nobody knows if these children have any problems or not. This shows that the institution of social workers is not developed in Azerbaijan and this gap simply must be filled. The Azerbaijani ombudsman's office plans in the near future to monitor families that have adopted children from orphanages, Elmira Suleymanova said.

Growing orphans, and there are more than 22,000 of them in Azerbaijan, raised in the country's many orphanages, will tomorrow begin adult life as fully-fledged members of society. However, the main problem is that they are not able to adapt to the harsh conditions of life in the modern world where, basically, nobody wants them. Adoption could of course resolve two problems in this instance: childlessness and orphanhood. Many people could gain a complete, happy family.