Children should be brought up in families, or in conditions as close as possible to a family, in a prosperous, supportive environment where their needs and interests are cared for. The boarding school system will be reformed. All these are important priorities in the Government's Action Program for the coming years.

“The Government has an absolutely realistic plan to reduce the number of boarding schools throughout four years. Family education should be as close as possible to the environment of parental care,” said Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk.

Starting in 2020, the Government will ensure the development of social services at the level of territorial communities, as is envisaged by the Law of Ukraine “On Social Services”. These include:

training of staff of executive authorities and local governments;

ensuring the functioning of bodies, institutions and services engaged in taking measures to prevent and combat ill-treatment, including domestic violence against children;

the establishment in each of the consolidated territorial communities of services for children’s affairs as a guarantor of the protection of the rights of the child in the respective territory;

strengthening the responsibility of parents for the life, health and development of children, organizing providing them with assistance in the upbringing of children;

implementation of support mechanisms for underage parents;

improving the work of the judicial branch, in particular, the introduction of specialization of judges in family cases or the establishment of family courts; developing amendments to civil procedural legislation to reduce the timeframe for considering cases arising from family legal relations;

reforming of existing family-type institutions in line with European standards (unified approaches to the creation, functioning of families who have voluntarily adopted orphans, children deprived of parental care, children left without parental care, determination of a justified number of children in such families, the introduction of specialization of such families);

increasing of state aid for children in family-type education, financial support for persons who voluntarily adopted orphans, children deprived of parental care, children left without parental care, etc.

It should be noted that in 2019, the Ministry of Social Policy in cooperation with local authorities managed to provide housing for 313 orphans and children deprived of parental care. According to the Minister of Social Policy Yulia Sokolovska, the current figures are twice as high as last year.

“In 2019, we provided housing for 1,962 children. At that in 2018, this figure was 829, and in 2017 - 468 apartments. That is more than double growth,” Yulia Sokolovska stressed.

Background

In September 2019 the Government has approved the Cabinet of Ministers' Action Program. The document determines key priorities for the Ministries in their activities. Now they have been detailed - for each of the 78 objectives of the Program, a concept and indicators have been published to measure their achievement.

The Government is making its work even more transparent - the document has been put up for discussion before its official approval. Anyone interested in each of the concepts can give feedback.