Full Description
This book provides new and empirically grounded research-based knowledge and insights into the current transformation of the Russian child welfare system. It focuses on the major shift in Russia's child welfare policy: deinstitutionalisation of the system of children's homes inherited from the Soviet era and an increase in fostering and adoption.
Divided into four sections, this book details both the changing role and function of residential institutions within the Russian child welfare system and the rapidly developing form of alternative care in foster families, as well as work undertaken with birth families. By analysing the consequences of deinstitutionalisation and its effects on children and young people as well as their foster and birth parents, it provides a model for understanding this process across the whole of the post-Soviet space.
It will be of interest to academics and students of social work, sociology, child welfare, social policy, political science, and Russian and East European politics more generally.
Contents
Part 1: Introduction. 1. Introduction: Russian Child Welfare Reform and Institutional Change. Part 2: Changing Numbers, Shifting Discourses. 2. Statistics on the Deinstitutionalization of Child Welfare in Russia. 3. The 'Last-minute Children': Where did they come from, where will they go? Media Portrayals of Children Deprived of Parental care 2006-2018. Part 3: Transforming Institutions. 4. The Ideal (Re)organization of Care: Child Welfare Reform as a Battlefield over Resources and Recognition. 5. Institutional Variety rather than the End of Residential Care: Regional Responses to Deinstitutionalisation Reform in Russia. 6. 'One has to Stop Chasing Numbers!' The Unintended Consequences of Russian Child Welfare Reform. Part 4: Foster And Birth Families Under Institutional Change. 7. 'Making' a Family: The Motives and Practices of Foster Parenting. 8. No Longer Parents or Parents in Need of Support? Views of Child Welfare Experts on Birth Parents. Part 5: Children In Care: Social Adaptation And Aftercare. 9. The Successful Transition to Foster Care: The Child's Perspective. 10. Young Adults Leaving Care: Agency and Educational Choice. Part 6: Conclusions. 11. In Conclusion: The Fragmented Implementation of the New Child Welfare Policy
