Unfortunately, every year a number of so-called social orphans, i.e. children left without parental care, is growing in Ukraine. Social orphans are children whose parents refuse to care about them or are deprived of parental rights. Unhealthy moral and psychological atmosphere within families, poverty, parents' alcohol addiction, parents in conflict with the law are the main causes of social orphans in the world.
Usually when specialists of guardianship of municipalities receive signals about trouble in the family they attend those apartments and this is the first indication that a family and their child cannot live safely. If a child is proved to be abandoned then comes the decision on restriction of parental rights and removal of a child from the family. Unfortunately, it often happens in normal, wealthy families where a 10-11-year-old child leaves home and goes to the station to live there because he feels thrown and neglected. He has a mobile phone, money but he feels an orphan with living parents because actually no one in the family is engaged in him. The Ukrainian Family code stipulates the grounds for restriction of parental rights. And even such reason as "a confluence of difficult circumstances" also exists. In such a case a fixed period of six months on reeducation of adults is given.
If parents are corrected, the state returns a child. In case they are not – it is fraught with full deprivation of parental rights. Sometimes the restriction of parental rights becomes a panacea. Family rehabilitate, the child is returned, but it happens only when time is not wasted yet.
It’s a pity, but the growing rate of the number of orphans in Ukraine makes up almost thirty percent annually, despite the fact that children are born less than a million a year. Orphanages and boarding schools often lack funds for basic maintenance of the inmates’ personal belongings (clothes, shoes), not to speak of the lack of personal attention to each child, as well as level of education. In this situation a helping hand is given by non-governmental organizations, businessmen, initiative groups of citizens and individuals. Hope Now ministries give a helping hand to orphans in Ukraine and help them change their lives for the better.