In Ukraine, there are several options for placing an orphan or a child deprived of parental care. In addition to the unwanted boarding school, there is adoption or alternative forms of upbringing - guardianship, foster families, family-type orphanages (FACH) and foster carers. As of 2025, there are 594 such foster families, with 1,103 children, but this is not enough, noted the national program director of the international charity organization “SOS Children’s Towns Ukraine”, chairman of the board of the union “Ukrainian Network for Children’s Rights” Daria Kasyanova in an interview with Alla Kotlyar for ZN. U.A..

“Every community should have at least two such families that can simultaneously accommodate up to three children. But we know cases when foster carers place five children in a family at a time. There are communities where there are no such families at all,” said Kasyanova.

The Chairman of the Board of the Union “Ukrainian Network for the Rights of the Child” emphasized that the war does not contribute to the emergence of new foster families. According to the latest data from the State Service for Children, there are 1,295 foster families in Ukraine (where 8,734 children are being raised) and 2,784 foster families (5,307 children, respectively). There are 442,407 children in 31,819 families under guardianship. The expert added that for various reasons today more foster families are being closed than are being created..

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“According to a study recently presented by SOS Children's Towns Ukraine, in guardianship, in foster families and in foster care, the needs of children from birth to six years old are provided with public funds only by 51%, from six to eighteen - by 63%. This means that even the basic needs of these children are not met, and parents-educators are forced to think about what to feed them. They cannot provide children with adequate treatment when necessary. They can’t buy them new shoes or send them to clubs. Sometimes because there is simply no transport, and it is physically impossible to transport six to ten children at the same time,” Kasyanova emphasized..

The national program director of SOS Children's Towns Ukraine indicated that economic problems are not decisive. According to her, most families are people with a mission, values \u200b\u200b\u200b\u200bwho make a decision about a child not because of financial reward. But because in their life there was some experience of orphanhood or one of the parents was brought up in a boarding school. But there are not as many such people as we would like.

“And, of course, minimum payments, and even long delays after the transfer of these payments to the Pension Fund - this is a problem. Children's services say that some families come to them and say: if there is no money for some time, then we will bring and leave the children here. Well, because there is nothing to feed them. The delays are really terrible.. For many families - since July. And there are those who haven’t received money for a year. We ask in the study: what do they live on Relatives help, borrow money, grow something in their gardens, raising ten children each, and also go somewhere to work. Everyone survives as best they can. Without unnecessary romanticization. But it shouldn't be this way. At the same time, we know how many of these parents are accused of profiting from their children. If it was a matter of finances, then all the children would have already been taken away,” said Kasyanova.

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In fact, the expert points out, the amount that families receive is meager and does not even cover basic needs. Not to mention the fact that the child needs to get ready for school and he must have a phone and a tablet or laptop for studying.

“The most effective channel of communication and dissemination of information about family forms of education is word of mouth”. And when people see that these families live in poverty, this does not at all contribute to the emergence of new such families. I hope the state will hear us and these payments will still be increased, because this is already beyond human dignity,” Kasyanova emphasized, adding that if the promise of the head of the State Service for Children is not fulfilled and the funds are not transferred to foster families by the end of this year, then they will be lost for these families.

She recalled that now the basic monthly payments in a foster family for children under six years of age are 6,407 hryvnia, for children from six to eighteen years old - 7,990 hryvnia, for persons over eighteen years of age continuing their education - 7,570 hryvnia. According to the calculations of the chairman of the board of the Ukrainian Network for Children’s Rights union, they need to be doubled. After all, we are talking about children with a very complex history..

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“I believe that it is impossible to compare orphans and children deprived of parental care with children in biological families. These are traumatized children who have a lot of problems.. And we are also responsible for this, because we did not remove them from dangerous biological families in time, then placed them in residential institutions, where they were subjected to violence and lost the opportunity to receive a normal quality education, timely medical care, etc.. Accordingly, all this then passes on to the adoptive parents, who must somehow make up for it. It's really hard work. And I believe that an additional 5 billion hryvnia per year is a completely feasible amount for the state, which for two years in a row has been paying everyone a thousand hryvnia of “Winter support”, which in fact does not affect anything. For these 11 billion hryvnias over two years it would be possible to support family forms of education and help these children and their families get out of poverty. This would be real support,” Kasyanova emphasized.

As for the recent decree of the President of Ukraine No. 859/2025 “On additional measures to protect the rights of children in the context of armed aggression against Ukraine,” the expert considers its appearance a bad sign.

“I don’t believe in decrees, they are declarative and don’t work. We lack real laws, for example, on family forms of education or on deinstitutionalization, as well as control over their implementation. There are many laws, but everyone uses only what directly concerns him. And there are many more regulations that intersect with each other. At the same time, we do not have the habit of reading and understanding legislation.. And in each region, the same regulatory act is interpreted differently when it concerns a specific child or family,” said Kasyanova.

We would like to remind you that, according to the chairman of the board of the Ukrainian Network for the Rights of the Child, in early December, journalists from Slidstvo. Info" According to the monitoring results, which the journalists reflected in the video, children did not have access to education and medicine, were subjected to physical and psychological violence and were forced to appear in promotional videos to raise money. And this is actually the reality of boarding schools, which does not change from moving to Turkey or anywhere else.