Ukraine develops plan to return Ukrainian orphans from abroad

The Ministry of Social Policy reported this.

Deputy Minister of Social Policy Iryna Postolovska noted that the priority is to place children in family-based care.
The return process also includes an individual needs assessment. A schedule of visits to countries where children have been evacuated has been developed. These include Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Spain, Romania, Slovenia, Greece and Croatia.

In particular, monitoring visits have already taken place to Turkey, Italy and Poland. UNICEF provides support in organising such visits.

In addition, the monitoring visits assess the needs of each child and the conditions in which they live. In particular, they check whether the child has all the necessary documents, access to education, and a sufficient number of accompanying persons.

‘Taking into account the needs of children, we determine the forms of their placement in Ukraine, and we must take into account the presence of their siblings, as they cannot be separated,’ said Petro Dobromilsky, head of the State Service for Children.

The agency added that there are currently about 2,000 orphans and children deprived of parental care who were evacuated as part of organised groups.

• On March 22, the Ukrainian government adopted amendments to the regulatory framework that simplify the process of adoption and placement of orphans and children deprived of parental care with new families.