Popularity of foster families grows in Russia

MOSCOW, July 3 (Itar-Tass) - Russian authorities stated success of nationwide social adaptation programme for underage orphans on Thursday, the number of teenagers who found adoptive parents went up 16 percent in the country for the last year alone. For the first time the number of children who were left without parental care reduced to 100 thousand, Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets said on Thursday. “This is a great merit of all regions,” she stated. According to official reports of the Ministry of Education and Science, 119 thousand underage children registered in databases lived in Russia in 2013. Their number has made 106 thousand at the end of the previous year. “The number of underage children will go down to at least 92 thousand before the end of 2014 in the database at such pace,” Minister of Education and Science Dmitry Livanov gave a comment to this effect. “Adoption processes should be accelerated considerably and the number of children left without parental care will decline to 82 thousand by the end of the year,” he said. The popularity of adoptions is growing in Russia. As many as 63 thousand underage orphans found their families in 2013 that is 15 percent more than in 2012. Reduction in the number of underage orphans is turning in a recent stable tendency, as their number went down 40 percent for past seven years. The ban on Russian orphans’ adoption by foreigners did not affect this tendency. The ban was imposed after a string of scandals with crimes, including sex crimes, against Russian children in the United States. Measures taken by Russian authorities influenced positively the number of adoptions. So, adoption procedure was drastically simplified and accelerated, the number of required documents was cut and one-time allowances for underage children adoptions were increased. Learn more on itar-tass.com