Admission rules will be added to parents – Newspaper Kommersant No. 207 (7408) dated 11/09/2022

The Government Commission on Legislative Activities approved the initiative of the Ministry of Education, put forward back in 2019, on a mandatory psychological examination for potential guardians. This was told to Kommersant by a member of the commission and chairman of the board of the Association of Lawyers of Russia (AJUR) Vladimir Gruzdev. Potential parents, he says, are often not ready to take care of foster children, which, in turn, leads to the return of children from care to orphanages. However, from the project of the Ministry of Education, which Kommersant managed to get acquainted with, it is not yet clear who will issue expert opinions to guardians, by whom and when the appropriate methods will be developed, and who will train specialists accompanying foster families.

Candidates for adoptive parents and “persons living with them” will be required to undergo a psychological examination. The corresponding draft law of the Ministry of Education (available to Kommersant) was approved by the government commission on legislative activities, Vladimir Gruzdev, chairman of the board of the AJUR, said on Tuesday: “The motivation of potential educators will also be clarified. Unfortunately, there are cases when foster parents take children into the family to solve their financial issues and receive benefits paid by the state.” In this regard, Mr. Gruzdev points to the practice of canceling decisions to place a child under guardianship.

There were 3,160 such “returns” to orphanages in 2021, 2,834 in 2020, and 3,345 in 2019, according to an explanatory note to the draft law of the Ministry of Education.

The initiative on psychological testing of guardians was presented by the Ministry of Education in 2019, this was preceded by a number of high-profile scandals. So, in 2017, a wide public outcry caused removal by the guardianship authorities from the Del spouses of 10 out of 13 children due to complaints of beatings. The Ministry of Education then proposed to radically change the existing rules for adoption, and a line appeared in the new bill prohibiting the adoption of more than one child per year. Just another suggestion concerned the introduction of a mandatory psychological examination of potential guardians, as well as “adult capable persons permanently residing in their family.” The Kommersant ministry explained the innovation by the need to “understand the applicants’ motivation and provide the necessary protection for the child.” The draft was planned for adoption in January 2021, but after the remarks of the state legal department of the president, it was sent for revision.

The proposal “no more than one child per year” has survived in the current version of the bill. Vladimir Gruzdev points out that such a restriction will not affect custody of brothers and sisters or children who have lived together for a long time. The document also contains a clause “on accompanying” families with adopted children. It “in order to assist the foster family and orphans in protecting their rights” will be carried out by “guardianship and guardianship authorities.” Accompanying one family per year will be no more than 60 hours – visits, conversations, observations, preparation of relevant documents.

As for the psychological examination of potential parents itself, the draft does not yet establish either the methodology, or the deadlines, or the process for appealing the expert opinion – this will have to be approved by the government in the future.

From the justification of the project, it follows that the ministry plans to cover 4,834 people with such an examination per year, and the examination itself will take “an average of two hours.” The state plans to affect orphans with a psychological test at the rate of 25% per year of the total number, that is, 96,624 people per year. Today in Russia, according to the Ministry of Education, there are more than 351,000 children in foster families and more than 35,000 more in institutions for orphans.

Svetlana Stroganova, program director of the Our Children Charitable Foundation and foster parent, reminded Kommersant that human rights activists criticized the “one child per year” clause at the project presentation stage three years ago. “It is still unclear what methods the psychological examination will be guided by, since 2019, the guardianship authorities began to act proactively and ask guardians to provide at least some conclusions from psychologists,” Ms. Stroganova said. “Some of them concluded that violence was used in the family, if the children, as part of the testing, drew the dad too big or the whole family with a black felt-tip pen, but there were no other felt-tip pens. This confusion “obliges” the authors of the bill to develop, approve and implement methodological materials already now, the expert insists. At the same stage, in her opinion, it is necessary to provide for a procedure for appealing against issued psychological reports. “Where can you find so many specialists who could provide support to families with more than 351,000 children? Svetlana Stroganova continues. “Who will train these specialists, where will the resources come from?” The Ministry of Education should return to the idea of ​​working with guardianship authorities, representatives of foster families, NGOs and charitable foundations, Svetlana Stroganova believes: “To have chances to implement this cool idea for real, and not just formally.”

According to Kommersant, this project will soon be submitted to the Russian government for approval, after which the Cabinet of Ministers will submit an initiative to the State Duma.

Maria Starikova