March 6, 2008: Izvestiya: Life of Children Ten Years From NowMoscow children have scored a great victory! From now on, their life in the city will be defined by a municipal programme that sets forth 10 commandments for adults.
The strategy is a 70-page document mainly composed of declarations which it would be impossible to disagree with. For example, the policy goal in the sphere of childhood is formulated as “the creation of conditions allowing every child to be brought up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding, when every family is ensured the needed protection and assistance in the fulfillment of its duties and responsibilities, while every young person is fully prepared for an independent life in his/her community, and high ideals of peace, dignity, tolerance, freedom, equality and solidarity are well instilled in young people’s minds”. However, there is something that makes this document different from regular declarations pronounced in the spirit of “it is good to be healthy and rich rather than sick and poor”. Its authors (the Department for Family and Youth Policy) have envisaged the enforcement of mechanisms to monitor progress towards desired goals using a well-developed system of dozens of indicators. E.g., the following indicators are expected to monitor the implementation of policy in the area of children’s and adolescent’s health care: reduction of the morbidity rate among schoolchildren, elimination of lines of patients waiting for a consultation with a pediatrician, reduction in the number of suicide attempts among children and adolescents and two dozens of other indicators. Such indicators as reduction in the number of orphaned disabled children residing in institutions, growth in the number of inclusive schools, etc. will serve as evidence of effective support to disabled children. The document consists of ten chapters corresponding to those spheres that are directly related to children and, in the authors’ opinion, are in need of improvement. “Conditions conducive to successful childbirth and early childhood” imply “high quality of life in an urban environment for pregnant women, including the best possible working conditions, rest and recreation opportunities and nutrition”, as well as strengthening the institution of family, creation of material incentives for a higher birth rate and better quality of services at maternity hospitals, including an increase in the number of family counseling centers and women’s health clinics. Other measures are aimed at improving the health of younger generation – for example, through “the optimization of workload at educational institutions and increasing the number of educational facilities that have access to free and safe drinking water and where only healthy food is available”. Other specific activities in this area include mandatory periodic health examinations, creation of early assistance centers, fitting school canteens with up-to-date equipment, upgrading of dental and medical offices at schools, introduction of health-friendly technologies and activities aimed at prevention of smoking and alcohol abuse. The City Mayor’s Office also envisages measures to support families with children, such as “increasing per capita income of Moscow families with children” and decreasing the share of families with several children with per capita income below subsistence level. Assistance to disabled children envisages additional disability benefits to their families, provision of wheel chairs and notebook computers with extras needed for distance learning (web-camera, printer, scanner, graphic panel). Other measures include easily accessible and high quality general education, unconditional observance of child rights and safe and secure school environment. Children should be engaged in the city’s cultural life, and city museums and exhibitions should be made more child-friendly. Children are even expected to participate in the decision-making process affecting all areas of their lives in the city. Besides, children should gain access to new information technologies and technological achievements. Even entrances to residential apartment blocks are to be decorated in an artistic manner – in order “to ensure comfortable and safe life for children” and “have a positive impact on their personal development”. Summing up the results of the meeting, Moscow City Mayor Yuri Luzhkov said some more items should be added to the concept: e.g., creation of tools to identify children’s talents. “The introduction of such early diagnostics tools would stir parents long in advance in the direction of their children’s further development”, Yuri Luzhkov said. According to the Mayor, parents should spend more time with their children, children should know more about other places in Russia besides Moscow, and specialized mass media for children should be established, including TV, newspapers, and literature for children. Representatives of the RF Ministry of Health and Social Development and UNICEF expressed their satisfaction with the strategy under discussion. During the next 12 months, the Moscow Government is to focus its efforts on the development of quantitative and qualitative indicators to assess the implementation progress and the identification of “child-friendly” amounts of funds to be assigned from the municipal budget to meet the strategy’s needs. However, Moscow does not seem to have any other choice – investing in children is not only the principal means of augmenting the human capital needed for national and regional development, but also the only way to rectify the current deplorable demographic situation. The statistics presented at the Moscow Government meeting serve as evidence of the above. For example, every day, 405 children are born in Moscow, 97 children lose one parent as a result of their parents’ divorce, 5 children are placed in institutions because their parents are deprived of parental rights…. 56% of families in Moscow have only one child – of all Russian cities, only St. Petersburg surpasses Moscow in this respect. Only every tenth family in Moscow has two children. By Irina Frolova
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