Family to Every Child

'Homelike Project. Smolensk region' helps children in orphanages remember their roots and get in touch with their family. This is a story about how our specialists found “lost” parents.

Practically since birth, 12-year-old Kirill was raised by his great grandmother. His mother suffers from alcoholism. His father had never even seen him; he ended up in jail before the boy was born and, according to the boy’s guardian, he never got in contact.

The boy and his great grandmother lived in his aunt’s apartment, who, according to his personal file, was not fond of the boy. Their host’s poor attitude towards him became the reason why his great grandmother gave little Kirill to the Safonovo orphanage.

Whenever a child leaves their family or foster care for the orphanage, our specialists are sure to always meet with them. After examining and talking with Kirill, it became clear that his family is very important to him. The Homelike project team got to work on the case and started to look for his family.

The address of Kirill’s grandmother on his father’s side was given in his personal file. This is where Alina Kiprich, the project’s conselor, headed.

The boy’s uncle was living in the apartment. For a long while, the man couldn’t understand who she was talking about – he had never seen Kirill – but when he figured it out, he helped find Dmitry, the boy’s father.

His father was overjoyed to hear news of his son. Dmitry told us that he had tried to see his boy, but due to the strained relationship with Kirill’s mother, nothing ever worked out. When Alina told him that the boy was fine and they could meet (for the first time in his life!), his father was truly happy.

Work is now underway to prepare the boy to meet his father.

In these cases, children oftentimes may harbor resentment towards their parents, not wish to talk to them, or simply not understand. Using special techniques, the project’s psychologists are helping the boy sort out his emotions, understand the situation, and prepare for the meet up.

Of course, there hasn’t been any talk of Dmitry taking Kirill from the orphanage, but we hope that the family reunion and long-awaited meeting will soon take place!

A brother and a sister have returned to their family after six months in the orphanage. This happened thanks to the sincere desire of their parents to turn things around, the careful work of the orphanage psychologist, and the Deti Nashi Foundation.

Six months ago, the children were removed from their family by court order and were placed in Shatalovo orphanage. The poor financial standing of the family, the employment difficulties of the mother, unsatisfactory living conditions, and arrears in rent served as the pretext for that situation.

Statistically, the majority of parents dramatically reduce the frequency of communication with children who stay in a residential care facility for more than two months. As a rule, time works against the reunification of the family.

However, in the described case, the mother regularly visited her son and daughter, and their stepfather also kept in touch. The orphanage psychologist conducted a series of tests with the children, which showed that:

- the children really missed their mother;

- the children are attached to their stepfather and he plays an important role in their lives;

- the children's stay in the orphanage was causing them far greater harm than the conditions in which they lived at home.

Of course, the experts of the Deti Nashi Foundation took on this case!

After three months of working together with parents, the situation of the family is as follows: the issues with employment have been resolved, cosmetic repairs have been made to the apartment, and the family is being provided with psychological support.

The children are home; the family is reunited; and we do hope that everything will be all right!

We have already spoken about the very complicated life circumstances that Misha found himself in, and how specialists have been working with him and his family. This is already the third year the boy has been living in an orphanage, but he dreams about living with his mom. Recently there was a court case to decide whether Misha would stay in the institution or go back home.

Over the past six months, our specialists have been working with Misha’s mom, Nadezhda*. During this time, she has started to work and has even visited her son in the orphanage. But she still hadn’t been able to open up emotionally, in order to understand the root cause of the problem. However, just a few days before the trial, a specialist managed to develop a deep personal connection with Nadezhda and get a glimpse of what is hiding behind that facade of outward calm.

It turns out that the mother of several children is still struggling with the tragic death of her own parents and has not allowed herself to openly deal with this emotional trauma, which, as is well known, always makes such feelings worse. Nadezhda blames herself for the death of her parents, and conversations about her mother and father, with whom she spent a carefree and happy childhood, cause her to break down in tears. Of course, when one has such deep and unhealed wounds, it is difficult to build proper relationships with one’s own children. However, after working on these psychological traumas, Nadezhda started to have more confidence in her abilities.

On the day of the hearing, everyone was visibly nervous: both Misha, who looked as if he wanted to hug his mom, and Nadezhda, who finally understood how she could change her life. The court issued the most favorable decision in such a case: a temporary restriction of parental rights. After the judgment, Nadezhda explained to her son that, right now, she had to work on her problems and really get back on her feet, and that he needed to wait for her in the orphanage. Misha took the court ruling and his mom’s words in stride. He only started to cry when he told her that he loved her and wanted time to fly by as quickly as possible.

In the photo on the left: Misha right after the court ruling, somewhat bewildered. In the photo on the right: the boy smiling happily. This means that this vital sense of childhood and joy is still alive in Misha.

Vanya* came to the Safonovo orphanage in September 2013 – prior to this he had spent 9 years living in different institutions for orphans.

In the previous orphanages, Vanya had a possibility to meet his relatives, but not in Safonovo. This location is a long way away from Smolensk city (where the boy is from) and it is both difficult and expensive to get there. Vanya’s aunt first stopped coming to visit him, and then stopped phoning. He is now very upset with his relatives and has a reputation for being an ‘aggressive teenager’ at the children’s home.

It is vitally important that children who were removed from their families keep in touch with their relatives. Even if it is not possible to return home, these contacts help to reduce stress and aggression in children and thus enable their development. The work of specialists such as psychologists and counsellors undoubtedly play an important role in this: without their professional help, working on the education and development of children at orphanages would be pointless.

Specialists from our foundation started to work with Vanya and faced serious difficulties when the conversation turned to the boy’s relatives. It immediately became clear that this was the reason for his aggression. Since December 2014, they have been working on rebuilding Vanya’s relationship with his family.

A counsellor from the foundation met Vanya’s brother who also lived in an orphanage but, unlike Vanya, his aunt regularly took him home during school holidays. Specialists also met the boys’ mother, but she was not prepared to see her sons as she already had another family. They also met the boys’ aunt.

At the end of 2014, a psychologist conducted a therapy session with Vanya. He refused point-blank to talk about his family. It was difficult to reduce his level of aggression, but Ekaterina managed to get through to the boy, and unexpectedly he admitted that felt angry towards the whole world because he was unable to communicate with his family and knew absolutely nothing about them.

Our specialists did a lot of work with Vanya and collected photographs of his family (his mother, father, brother and sister who was living in an adoptive family). Vanya discovered for the first time how his father looked like! At last, his aunt and brother have started to visit him again.

According to orphanage personnel, Vanya has become calmer and more confident. He loves doing physical work and attending thecarpentry workshop and can spend hours in doing crafts from wood.

*the name of the child has been changed

Sasha* is 13. He has spent five years of his life in the orphanage and nobody has ever visited him there. According to the documents, his only family was his mother.

Specialists of the Fund (a project team) decided to find the boy’s mother but unfortunately, she had died before they started looking for her. The child protection services did not have any information on other Sasha’s relatives in the official papers, but the boy said he had a father and aunts. He did not remember much – just a few snapshots from his early childhood. Nobody knew if his relatives were still alive or where to look for them.

As the child protection services claimed Sasha did not have any relatives, the only thing the specialists could do was to find his family house. The boy started working with a “Book of life” – a colorful and informative "workbook" which is used by a psychologist / social worker (and often by two specialists together!) to help the child reconstruct his own experience and form a complete idea about himself, – and Sasha wanted to have a picture of his house. The project team managed to find this house and also spoke to the neighbors. Those people said that a family used to live there, and the boy had both a mother and a father. The neighbors also provided the contacts of Sasha’s aunt – his father’s sister.

We were lucky to find not only Sasha’s father and his sisters but also his mother’s sister. They were happy to know their Sasha is safe and sound and lives not far from them. In fact, the boy’s father and aunts used to make an attempt to find him but their request was turned down – probably because there wasn’t any information about the father in Sasha’s birth certificate.

Sasha was happy: he was no longer alone, he had a family that needed him! Isn’t it the most important thing for any child? The boy soon met his aunt (he has got four aunts altogether!) and grandaunt. Unfortunately, his father could not come but he was on the phone with his son. This was the first meeting out of many we hope.

It is very important to preserve the children’s family ties. Even in an orphanage, they need to know they are not alone.

We are looking forward to the continuation of this exciting story.

* the child`s name has been changed