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And there will be no fourth
Senator of the Ulyanovsk region Airat Gibatdinov (CPRF) proposed to tighten the guardianship procedure. He plans to limit care to no more than three children per family. This plan should stop unscrupulous guardians who take children for state payments. However, experts note that problems in the guardianship sphere should not be solved "mathematically", but in a comprehensive manner, by restructuring the system of regulators and improving the qualifications of experts. And we believe that the proposed restrictions will deprive many children of the opportunity to get into suitable families.
Amendments to the family law submitted to the Federation Council's legal department limit the number of children in care to a maximum of three per family. Exceptions apply to siblings and children you previously grew up with.
The author of the bill is Senator from the Ulyanovsk region Airat Gibatdinov. He believes that the plan will help combat this practice, "when children are massively given into guardianship and earn money."
The explanatory note also states that the restrictions will help families better adapt and provide guardianship authorities with additional control capabilities.
According to family law, children can be protected if they are left without parental care. Guardianship lasts until the child turns 14 (from this point on, guardianship is provided until the child reaches 18). The ward must live with the family as an adopted child, and in return, the ward receives a monthly payment from the state. It depends on the region. For example, in 2024 in Moscow you can receive 21,873-36,453 rubles, and in the Ulyanovsk region - only 10,896 rubles. The guardian is obliged to report to the state annually on the spending of these funds. Guardianship authorities are obliged to monitor the child's living conditions at least twice a year.
Airat Gibatdinov told Kommersant that he had prepared the bill after a "serious analysis" of the situation with family guardianship. He decided to conduct the analysis after a recent scandal that occurred in the Ulyanovsk region. It turned out that a woman who raised seven children at once regularly used violence against them. "My assistants and a team of lawyers came to the conclusion. When people adopt more than three children, this is already a business, not a feeling of love. As a result, small orphanages are created, but often with unqualified specialists and worse conditions than in ordinary orphanages," the senator said.
Currently, there is no law limiting the number of children that can be detained or adopted.
The rules for creating foster families, approved by the government in 2009, state that “in principle, the number of children, including biological and adopted, does not exceed 8,” but this is only a recommendation, not a requirement. In 2018, the Department of Education prepared a package of amendments to the adoption and guardianship procedure. The first version of the document proposed sending no more than three children per family and no more than one child per year. The bill was adopted by the State Duma in the first reading in June 2023, but by that time the rules limiting the number of adopted or fostered children had disappeared from the text.
"Guardianship authorities check guardian families twice a year. "There is no fundamental difference whether you supervise the upbringing of three or five children," the expert believes. At the same time, the adoptive parent Ms. Stroganova has serious complaints about the quality of state control over such families. First, it is necessary to improve the qualifications of guardianship authorities and expand the staff, the expert believes, "Then it will be easier to identify family problems, whether blood or adopted." If Senator Gibatdinov adopts the amendment, "many children will ultimately live outside the family," says Svetlana Stroganova.
Elena Alshanskaya, volunteer director of the Charity Fund "Help for Orphans", notes that tragic situations periodically occur in foster families. According to her, Russian laws are designed in such a way that "it is very easy to accept a child into a family." "There is a kind of checklist: income level, availability of housing, training of foster parents. If these formal criteria are met, guardianship authorities cannot refuse to transfer a child to a family," the expert says. Ms. Alshanskaya believes that the adoption and guardianship system needs to be restructured. "It is necessary to improve the level of training of guardianship authorities. A competent specialist will consider each case not mechanically, but will assess the real capabilities of the family. With such a responsible approach, the likelihood that your family will have many looked after children will be much lower. But anyone who is truly capable of taking on this responsibility will not miss this opportunity."