Abstract:

In 1991, Ukraine ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and recognized the importance of families in providing the best environment for children to grow up, learn and develop. Therefore, creating conditions where each child enjoys the right to grow up in a family, ensuring priority of family-type homes for orphans and children deprived of parental care, and creating a family-type environment for children in institutional care have become underlying principles for the national child care and protection policy. According to the study results, the majority of children, despite international requirements, are placed in these institutions because of poverty, difficult family circumstances and social insecurity of families. The institutions are isolated from the community, thus making it challenging to monitor the living conditions of children. Needs of an institution prevail over the needs of a child. The situation has been complicated by the fighting in eastern Ukraine: as a result, we can see a new socially vulnerable group emerging that includes crisis-affected and internally displaced children who are in need for the state care. However, the national decentralization reform considerably increases the chance of successful deinstitutionalization reform. Therefore, this subject needs more in-depth assessment. The purpose of this study is to analyze the national child care system in order to determine conditions for successful deinstitutionalization.