Child Protection

Child Social Protection Reform

Like most countries in the region, Azerbaijan has a lot of institutions that are unsuited to children's well being and proper development. From special institutions for children with disabilities to live-in boarding schools for children deprived of parental care and centres for “difficult” youth, these places are often quick solutions for the unwanted and unprotected. Inside, cut off from the rest of society, vulnerable children are left to fester for years without a loving family, a decent education, basic services to prepare them for eventual release or the specialist care many of them need. Due to their isolation often exposed to potential violence abuse and exploitation.

Current figures suggest that some 17,000 children are in institutions of one kind or another, but few of them need to be.[1] In most cases – perhaps as many as 90 per cent – the children have at least one parent alive, who should be taking care of them. But an almost complete lack of social services in communities means that when families get into financial or other difficulties they see long term placement at a state institution (institutionalisation) as the only solution. Perhaps the parents lose a job and cannot afford food and clothing for the children. Perhaps they lose their home because they have no access to legal services to fight eviction. Perhaps they fall ill and cannot get treatment. In each of these cases, a short-term cash injection, psychosocial assistance, legal aid, employment assistance or support for medical treatment would solve the problem. But with no such services available, parents find themselves unable to cope and commit their children to institutions. Once children are taken in and the bond with their parents is broken, it is much harder to get them out again; and the damage to children from being placed in a home can never be fully healed.

UNICEF began working on this issue five years ago and has been lobbying the government to change the system. This advocacy bore fruit in 2006 when the President signed the State Programme on Deinstitutionalisation and Alternative Care – a policy document put together with UNICEF's help and which represents the first official recognition by the state that institutions are not good for children. The programme called for a review of legislation, which was undertaken by UNICEF, Stockholm University and the UK Children's Legal Centre and resulted in a series of recommendations including the establishment of social services, better procedures for deciding which children are admitted to institutions and the creation of alternative solutions. These alternatives include drop-in and day-care centres and foster families, where a small number of children live with a single pair of foster parents in an environment that is as close to that of a normal family as possible. UNICEF is now working with the government to draw up the legislation required to make these recommendations a reality.

As well as policy-level interventions, the government, UNICEF and Bologna University have been modelling integrated social services for institutionalised children, including children with disabilities, and street children. We have also begun training local authorities, institution staff and central-level government officials on gate-keeping (how to decide whether or not children should be institutionalised and how to ensure that alternative solutions are looked at first) and on individual care plans for children in institutions that prepare them for release and reintegration back into their communities. At the same time, we are trying to bridge the gap between children in institutions and the communities they are usually cut off from through a programme of inclusive sporting activities (detailed in the Youth Participation section below); and we are working with the Ministries of Education, Labour and Social Protection and Health to develop a comprehensive master plan for reform of all existing childcare institutions into alternative more child-friendly and family-like services.

At present, social services are very limited. There are some cash transfers for the poorest families (although these are not always easy to access) and there are institutions. The country has no qualified cadre of social workers and responsibility for children is spread across a bewildering array of ministries and local-level commissions, making it very hard for children or families to know where to go when they need help, such as in cases of abuse or family crisis, and also reducing the ability of the government to allocate resources in a coordinated and efficient way.

To remedy the situation, UNICEF is responding to this situation on two levels – by helping to set up social services on the ground that can provide direct assistance, and also by working with the government to put in place the laws and policies needed for a comprehensive system of child protection nationally

UNICEF is working with the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection and the Parliament to establish a system of social work with clear job descriptions for social workers and a comprehensive legal framework. To this end, we have helped to establish a proper Master's degree in social work to be taught at the recently established Department of Social Work of the Baku State University. This department will eventually produce enough qualified graduates to staff the new system envisaged in forthcoming legislation, but this is expected to take many years. In the meantime, UNICEF has been working with hundreds of staff in the existing system to improve their skills and sensitise them to the needs of children.

On the ground, UNICEF is working in six pilot districts to set up integrated social services for vulnerable children and their families. We have trained more than 500 local government officials, managers of childcare institutions, NGO staff and community leaders to carry out basic social work in their communities. Feedback from the field and from an external evaluation by an international team suggests that these people are now a driving force for change and a model that the government can learn from when introducing services nationwide.