In Kyzylorda, roundtable held on the results of the "Child in the Family" project

Kyzylorda, Kazakhstan - On February 23, 2016, the Children of Chernobyl and Aral Sea Foundation, as part of the USAID's Initiative to Support Good Governance held a roundtable on the results of the Child in the Family project, implemented in order to prevent the abandonment of children aged zero to three in the city of Kyzylorda.

To date, the growth of social orphanhood in the Republic of Kazakhstan is of special concern. According to the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of Children of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan, there are more than 32,000 orphans and children left without parental care in Kazakhstan; in the Kyzylorda Oblast, 1,018 orphans, 80% of whom have parents and relatives who, for various reasons, cannot raise them. In this case, the society and the state take care of children.

According to the general opinion of experts, it is necessary to accelerate the process of introducing the infrastructure of innovative social services, covering children, families at risk, guardians’ families, and children in orphanage institutions. The organization of a flexible network of services at the local level is critical, as it will work with families at risk and help prevent the refusals of parents in hospital to take care of their infants.

The participants of the roundtable got acquainted with the expert analysis of B. N. Tumenova, President of Aman-Saulik, who spoke about the medical and social problems leading to social orphanhood and ways to solve them at the national and regional levels, using the modern technologies of social work on the prevention of social orphanhood, used in the city perinatal center and polyclinic No. 4 in Kyzylorda.

The model of rendering a system of special social services for the prevention of child abandonment in Kyzylorda, tested by the Children of Chernobyl and the Aral Sea Fund in conjunction with state medical institutions, has shown its effectiveness and timeliness: in 2015, in 29 out of 38 cases, the abandonment of children was prevented.