Results of the monitoring visit to Lviv region

For two days, on January 9 and 10, experts of the Ukrainian Child Rights Network, together with representatives of the Office of the Ombudsman and the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine, worked in the Lviv region. With monitoring visits they visited the orphanage in Lviv, the orphanage “Ridnyi Dim” in Sambir, Lviv Children’s Clinical Hospital and Orphanage, as well as checked the activities of regional and local services for children and centers of social services for families, children and young people.

As part of the monitoring visit on January 10, a focus group was held with foster parents, educators of family-type orphanages and guardians. The issues of observance of children’s rights in the region were investigated.

Finally, experts noted that the region has managed to retain professional staff. Relevant institutions have a good material base, children are registered properly.

The centers for social support of children and families are ready for reforms, in particular, they have plans for deinstitutionalization.

However, the problem of funding is very acute. As a result, there is a catastrophic lack of resources for the Children’s Service, the Center for Social Services for Families, Children and Youth with Families in Difficult Circumstances. The scarcity of funds does not allow social workers to make business trips to even the village furthest from the district center.

Personnel problems are also evident: social work specialists in administrative and territorial units are sometimes simply absent. Experts say that this problem concerns not only the Lviv region. This is a systemic shortcoming throughout the country.

In addition, within the framework of the decentralization reform, there are still problems with the transfer of functions from the services for children of district state administrations to the relevant services for children in the case of the creation of united territorial communities. Experts are convinced that at the level of legislation the mechanism of transfer of functions is extremely poor and it is not actually implemented. Therefore, the Ministry of Social Policy should pay attention to this.

“We must understand that, in accordance with the reform of decentralization of power in Ukraine, from 2020, administrative territorial units must fully assume the function of guardianship and trusteeship. Today, they are not actually ready for this. And this threatens not only the reform of deinstitutionalization, but also directly affects the life, health and level of social protection of children in the regions of Ukraine,” said Svitlana Klochko, executive director of the Ukrainian Child Rights Network.

It will be recalled that monitoring visits to the regions of Ukraine are part of a joint project of UCRN and UNICEF “Ensuring capacity building and influence of non-governmental actors in developing, implementing and monitoring respect for children’s rights in alternative care, improving child protection policies and strategies.”

There are three more regions ahead: Odesa, Kharkiv and Donetsk. The ultimate goal is to prepare an alternative to the state report on Ukraine’s compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.