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The International Social Service (ISS) completed an a 128 page assessment of Ukrainian adoption in October 2005. The backstory on why this report was produced is found here.
The ISS recommended.
A placement facility [for a child taken into state custody] should be selected as close as possible to the child’s environment, perferably in the form of a small “family-style” living unit.
I just found a great blog by a young American woman named Rosa. She visited one of the new “family-style” housing. It is part of an existing orphanage. There aren’t many set up in Ukraine yet.
Rosa is living in Zhytomir Ukraine for the next 9 months. In years past she visited in the summer to help with Christian Summer Camps for a Zhytomir orphanage.
Now she is living with a Ukrainian friend Anya. Anya and her husband run a “foster home” for 5 Ukrainian children. Rosa recently visited a Zhytomir orphanage.
It’s something called a “Family Group.”
What it is is 13 kids, all different sets of siblings that have been chosen to live together in a remodeled area with really nice bedrooms, tv room, a kitchen, and huge shower/bathroom. It’s basically a coze family environment in the middle of a dreary orphanage.
I’ve never seen anything like this in my life in a PUBLIC orphanage. It was like I was in a private foundations orphan house. I just wanted to weep I was so happy.
The kids go to school with all the other orphans but after class they come home to this area to do their homework, they eat in their private kitchen, and have this super sweet lady acting as their “house mom.”
We asked a bunch of questions. Turns out this is the first “family group” in all of Ukraine. It was the Ukrainian president’s wife who came up with the idea. Somehow the Zhytomir Oblast was chosen for the project and the administrator of the oblast talked with the director of this orphanage and it happened.
I am pretty sure the President’s wife didn’t come up with the idea. But she sponsored and push for it to be implemented.
