XVI April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development
April 7–10, 2015 in Moscow
Meri Kulmala, Maija Jäppinen and Jouko Nikula
Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki (Finland)
A Child’s right to a Family:
Deinstitutionalization of Child Welfare in Russia as Ideology and Practice
This paper presents a research project analyzing the on-going foster care reform in Russia in
the context of the country’s new family policies. Accurate research is needed to map the
complex whole of the situation of child welfare in Russia; which developments the system is
heading towards, and what kind of ideology lies behind the family policies and related reform
in the country. The paper scrutinizes new programmes of child welfare, especially foster care,
and presents a research plan to examine further the programmes and their implementation at
the level of practices. In addition to the national programs, we analyze the changes brought by
the reform at the regional level in three different regions of Russia (Karelia, Nizhnyi Novgord
and Tiumen) and in several concrete units involved in child welfare in those regions.
The foster care reform in Russia can be conceptualized as deinstitutionalization, meaning
both the closing of large institutions and development of support services for families that
aim to prevent social orphanhood. Deinstitutionalization is a phenomenon that extends
beyond Russia.1 At the ideological level of welfare policies, deinstitutionalization can be
connected to global neoliberal development trends. This can be seen in the rhetoric that
highlights individual rights (and responsibilities) and in the model of services striving to
diminish the governmental input while being cost-efficient. Russia’s traditional state-led
system of welfare services can ideologically be labelled as state paternalism. The new
programs on child welfare – and welfare policies more generally – in contemporary Russia
seem to entail elements of the aforementioned, often contradictory to one or another ideology
1
Similar processes have taken place in many other countries as well: most often however we are talking about
processes that have taken decades. In the United States and Western Europe, discussion about
deinstitutionalization took place and large foster care institutions were dismantled most actively in the 1960-70s
(e.g. Reid 1975; Dore & Kennedy 1981); in Eastern Europe in 1990s–2000s (e.g. Ivanova & Bogdanov 2013;
Schidt & Bailey 2014). Australia is the country where the deinstitutionalization of foster care has been developed
the furthest with 94 % of replaced children residing in foster families. (Laakso 2009). Finland still appears as a
relatively institutionalized country in what concerns the foster care. Most of the institutions are, however,
relatively small and they are designed to be as much like homes as possible.
1
XVI April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development
April 7–10, 2015 in Moscow
Meri Kulmala, Maija Jäppinen and Jouko Nikula
Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki (Finland)
(see also Hemment 2009). Therefore, the research will provide new information on what the
new conservative, familialistic ideology actually means in practice in contemporary Russia.
Examination of the foster care reform will open ways to understand both changes in the
conception of the family in the modern society and of what constitutes a good life for a child,
children’s rights, and, finally, division of labor and roles between public and private actors in
welfare production. By analyzing the development of foster care, we can shed light on crucial
traits in Russia’s evolving welfare system, and better understand the functioning of its
tripartite governmental system in the country.
Family policy of the 2000s’ Russia
Unlike the question of birth rate as the top-priority, the development of foster care services
have been raised as a central issue in family policy only in the very recent years. Starting from
the early 2000s, a strong family-centered ideology has characterized the governmental policy
programs; a new conservative protection of the family has served as a key task for the
governmental policies (Chernova 2013; Rivkin-Fish 2010; Rotkirch et al. 2007), which define
the families very narrowly, conservatively and normatively. The concept of family is defined
as those married couples or single parents with child. A normative distinction of wellfunctioning and disadvantaged families is made, and nothing is said to break the traditional
gender roles.2
The pronatalist family policy of the 2000s has unquestionably focused on the ethnically
Russian, young heterosexual nuclear families and their (potential) children. The stress on
family values is obviously connected to the severe decline of population in Russia. Most of the
policy measures strive to augment the birth rate in the country. For instance, prenatal
services have been improved and benefits for families with children introduced and icreased,
including though the one-time compensation for foster families. (Chandler 2013; Cook 2011;
Kulmala et al. 2014; Rivkin-Fish 2010).
See e.g. the National Concept of Family Policy (NCFP); National Concept of Policy Concerning Young Families
(NCPYF).
2
2
XVI April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development
April 7–10, 2015 in Moscow
Meri Kulmala, Maija Jäppinen and Jouko Nikula
Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki (Finland)
The above-mentioned major areas of family policies have attracted attention in social
sciences. In spite of Russia’s massive system of children’s homes and the government’s tight
grip on the process of placing children of “problem families” into the institutional foster care,
until recently child welfare and foster care have been largely marginalized in the
governmental politics and neglected in scholarly investigations.
New national initiatives to prevent “social orphanhood” and dismantle the system of
children’s homes
In Russia in 2012, almost 300,000 children i.e. 1.1 % of all children) were living in the
approximately 1,000 existing children’s homes of the country, nearly all of which were
governmental.3 The Russian foster care system has been blamed for being highly
institutionalized and incapable of supporting the families. These are now exactly those
questions that the current reform strives to answer.
The Russian government has established new national programs that share the central
principle of a child’s right to live and grow up in a family. This means shirting the focus to
welfare improvements in families and thus to prevention of social orphanhood. The ideal of
the family as the best environment for a child to grow up in is translated into an attempt to
deinstitutionalize the previous, institution-dominated system into a foster family dominated
system. The ambiguous goal is to have 90 percent of children in state custody living in foster
families. The programs state that not all children (for instance, the severely disabled) are
capable of living in families. Institutional placements will therefore be an option, but most
resources will probably be directed towards the development of a foster family system.
In the Russia of the 2010s, the welfare of children is therefore envisioned above all as thriving
in the private sphere. The duty of the state is to create high-quality structures to support the
work done in families. In 2012, a “National Strategy to promote the interests of children in
3
However, there are lots of children in state state custody but living outside the institutions: in 2012, about half
of children placed in governmental custody were placed in family care without compensation (i.e. most ofthen
with their relatives) and 17 % in contracted foster families (http://www.usynovite.ru/statistics/2012/6).
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XVI April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development
April 7–10, 2015 in Moscow
Meri Kulmala, Maija Jäppinen and Jouko Nikula
Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki (Finland)
2012–2017 (NSIC)” was established by a presidential decree aiming at securing children’s
rights, improving child health, battling poverty in families and thus preventing the emergence
of disadvantaged families. Dismantling the institutional care system is facilitated by
developing a foster family system, domestic adoptions and measures to support families by,
for instance, developing social services.
The National Strategy is complemented by the programme Russia without Orphans (RWO) for
the years 2013–2020, in which the goals of strengthening the family institution, supporting
parenthood and preventing social orphanhood are further outlined. RWO also strives to
improve the situation of children in institutional care by developing more family-like
circumstances and to develop the after-care mechanisms (Kulmala 2013b). The presidential
party, United Russia has recently established a nation-wide social program “Russia Needs All
Its Children (RNA)”, which focuses on preventing social orphanhood and promoting the
replacements of children in families. Under its auspices, a national monitoring system of the
regional developments has been established. Foster care is also one of the main issues in the
National Concept of Family Policy (NCFP) that was adopted in August 2014. Now as this
concept is finalized, each federal subject has to create their own regional concepts.
With the reform, Russian municipalities have established an office responsible for the
recruitment and training of foster families. Some children’s homes have already been
transformed into family support centers. In addition to the limited resources of the current
institutions, open questions are, for instance, where to find all the foster care families, and
how the foster care in families will be monitored and supported. One challenge in the reform
of the institutional care system is, among others, the general attitude: the Russians have
usually not been eager to become foster families. In light of the most recent statistics though,
this situation seems to be changing.
It can already be seen that the goals of the national programs are producing paradoxical
consequences. The national-level maximum concerning the amount of children placed in a
children’s home has, for instance in Karelia, resulted in augmenting smaller children’s homes
to comply with the maximum. To show higher number of replacements in amilies, tens of
children can have been placed in one foster family, even though the law sets the maximum to
4
XVI April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development
April 7–10, 2015 in Moscow
Meri Kulmala, Maija Jäppinen and Jouko Nikula
Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki (Finland)
eight. In principle, the reform strives to enhance the quality of foster care, but as an
unintended consequence, the monitoring system seems to lead to the quantitative
measurement of results by the factual number of replacements in families and closed
children’s homes, which is obviously no guarantee of the quality of the foster care system in
itself. Also, to show better result in the numbers, children are unsuccessfully replaced into
foster families and then later returned to the institutions; though, family replacements are left
in the statistics.
The aim of diminishing the amount of children’s homes might lead, in addition to the
expansion of the foster family system, to increasing the role of third sector (NGOs, charities,
and religious organizations) and market-based solutions. In governmental programs, one of
the central principles is the so called social partnership between the government, NGOs, and
business actors. Moreover, as the most recent development, a new law on social service provision
came into force in 2015. Earlier it was state and municipal institutions which provided the basic
social services regulated by the law, but in the new system social services can be provided anyone
from whom the state now decides (on a call-for-proposals principle) to purchase the services.
(Kainu et al. 2015). The governmental politices thus open avenues for NGOs and businesses to
step into the field of child welfare and foster care.
Research design
The central research question of the planned project is: How does the ongoing reform change
the child welfare system, in particular the foster care practices, in Russia? The question is
outlined by the following hypotheses:

The intertwining of partly contradictory neoliberal and state-paternalist ideologies
produce contradictory national goals, which has unintended and unexpected
consequences in meeting the goals at various levels.

The conflicts between the federal goals and local circumstances (e.g., the lack of
resources, inadequate infrastructure) enhance the emergence of various, partly
unofficial, modes of cooperation between the officials, business actors and NGOs. That
will, in turn, produce hybrid service solutions both inside the governmental children’s
homes and possibly alongside of them.
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XVI April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development
April 7–10, 2015 in Moscow
Meri Kulmala, Maija Jäppinen and Jouko Nikula
Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki (Finland)

The institutional field remains state-dominated (although as hybrid; see above). In
addition to the filling the gaps within the remaining institutions, the main role of the
NGOs will deal with the prevention of social orphanhood and after-care.

The clash between the goals of the reform, existing legislation and grass root-level
practices generates an institutional trap, which will hinder the fulfillment of the goals
and produce paradoxical consequences; for instance, the legislation of the termination
of the parents’ rights is in its current form generating social orphanhood instead of
helping to fight it.

The reform produces regionally and locally distinct systems of child welfare, where
economically and corporate-culturally dynamic regions can offer models of service
desired by the political programmes, whereas other regions will have to resort to an
existing, partly deteriorating system.

The reform leads to the normative division of foster care into an idealized family care
and problematized institutional care to which the children that are most difficult to
replace will end. The institutions will further deteriorate as resources are directed
elsewhere
The methodological premise of the project bases on the idea that the analysis of social policies
should not rely entirely on a scrutiny of official programs at the national, level but their
practical implementation has to be also taken into account. We investigate how ideologies of
the selected federal level documents become implemented in the regional-level action plans
and further in the local practices. In addition to the national policy programs, the research
analyzes changes brought by these federal policies at the regional level in three different
regions of Russia and in local-level child welfare services within them. Such a research design
enables us to create an exceptionally comprehensive understanding of the the actual
functioning of the foster care system. It enables us to understand the contradictions between
the general aims and local solution and intended and unintended consequences of the reform.
Such desing also reveals possible spaces of local agency within the guidance of the central
governments.
The project analyses regional child protection systems, in particular the development of foster
care as case studies in three Russian regions: the Republic of Karelia, Nizhny Novgorod and
6
XVI April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development
April 7–10, 2015 in Moscow
Meri Kulmala, Maija Jäppinen and Jouko Nikula
Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki (Finland)
Tyumen. According to the current legisltation, the Russian federal government answers
mainly for the general principles of social policies, while the implementation of these
principles is in the hands of the Russian regional government, which is why the analysis of the
regional level is important (Kulmala 2013a.)
The selection of three different regions gives a good opportunity to compare the development
of a child welfare system, its regional implication and practices. The regions are
geographically very distant from one another and also acutely different in their social and
economic statuses. The Nizhny Novgorod region and the Republic of Karelia have traditionally
been quite dependent of federal budgetary financing, which in part may restrict the
operational preconditions of local officials. Tyumen in part is one of the Russia’s richest
regions and has the potential of its own social policy making (Kainu et al. 2015).
The Republic of Karelia has traditionally been a region where the Finnish actors have
attempted to promote social wellbeing, including child welfare. The aforementioned national
policy programs are just beginning on the area. Nizhny Novgorod offers yet a different case,
because such foreign support is lacking from the region. As in Karelia, the reform is only just
starting there. Tyumen for its part has functioned as a pilot for the reform. As a result, the
amount of children placed in foster families has grown, number of children in institutional
care has diminished, and children returned to their biological families more often after the
six-month period in custody. The experiences gained from the pilot project offer an excellent
point of comparison for analysis of the reforms in two other regions.
The research is based on an innovative methodological design that builds on the triangulation
of various research materials and combination of the different levels of analysis. In this
research strategy, results of earlier analytical phases form the basis for further collecting of
data and analysis thereof will produce a progressively focused research implementation. The
various materials analyzed will be combined at three different levels (see also Table 1):
Russia’s national, federal level
-
Content analysis of the national policy programs (NSIC, RWO, NDA, NCFP)
-
Evaluation of the the national statistics
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XVI April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development
April 7–10, 2015 in Moscow
Meri Kulmala, Maija Jäppinen and Jouko Nikula
Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki (Finland)
Regional level of the federal subjects
-
Content analysis of the regional-level action plans of the federal policies
-
Evaluation of the regional budgets of the aforementioned program
-
Evaluation of the regional statistics
-
Thematic interviews of the officials and experts in the region (incl. representatives
of the Ministries of Education and Ministry of Health Care and Social Development,
Parliamentary Committees on Family, Children and Women).
Institutional level (child welfare units/actors)
-
Focus group discussion in each of the case study regions before the major fieldwork
with e.g. the directors of children’s homes and child welfare NGOs to establish a
comprehensive view of the key actors in the region in the field of child welfare.
-
Fieldwork in different types of units (interviews with staff members/foster parents):

State-based children’s homes

New municipal foster care offices

Temporary reception centers (priiut, where short-term placements are made)

Family support centers (where preventive work of with families is being done)

Child welfare NGOs (and other possible actors)

Educational institutions that train foster families

Foster families
8
XVI April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development
April 7–10, 2015 in Moscow
Meri Kulmala, Maija Jäppinen and Jouko Nikula
Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki (Finland)
9
XVI April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development
April 7–10, 2015 in Moscow
Meri Kulmala, Maija Jäppinen and Jouko Nikula
Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki (Finland)
10
XVI April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development
April 7–10, 2015 in Moscow
Meri Kulmala, Maija Jäppinen and Jouko Nikula
Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki (Finland)
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