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Our Family
Russia, Moscow, Spartakovskaya pl. 3
+7 495 2677419; +7 495 2678843
mftern@mail.ru
Mission statement
Our Family Center believes that every child should be brought up in a natural family environment. Every effort should be done in order to help a child to live with his own birth parents and if this is no longer possible - with foster or adoptive parents.
Our Family supports child care reform in the Russian Federation, which will allow every child to live and be brought up in a family.
The Background to ‘Our Family'
Our Family was born in the dark days of the Soviet Union, when Caroline Cox visited the region with a delegation of social scientists and medics who were shocked and dismayed by the gross mistreatment and neglect of children that they witnessed in state orphanages. Caroline Cox's original report, which was scientifically robust but written with deep concern, was called Trajectories of Despair: Misdiagnosis & Maltreatment of Soviet Orphans.
The Russian initiative - The Our family Programme, supported by the Ministry of Education of Russia, was set up in 1994 as a response to the need of a change. The achievements of the Our Family have been recognised in an evaluation by Professor Christina Lyon, Professor of Law at Liverpool University. Christina Lyon's report, Trajectories of Hope, is a strong endorsement of all aspects of the programme.
The Structure and Achievements of the Organisation Today
Today, ‘Our Family' works to provide fundamental care for these disadvantaged children. ‘Our Family' is the informal name for 2 initiatives:
- the reformed orphanage No 19 in Moscow that is working as a fostering and a family support service in Moscow and has main funding coming from the Moscow government which is also placing children with it.
- the NGO, "The Our Family Fund", which is fully accountable as an independent charity. The Our Family Fund is doing fundraising for the children and foster families of the fostering project as we as it has the Training Center and the dissemination and training programmes, which are a vital aspect of ‘Our Family's aim to spread their blue-chip model of foster-care throughout the Russian Federation.
Our Family Programme in brief:
The Our Family fostering project was started in 1994 as a new one so it did not have any children at the beginning. The work with the children has been started in 1996 after the overall approval for the Our Family fostering programme and general programme development.
The project has from 20 to 45 new children coming into care each year. It keeps working with those who have been placed in previous years until their whether return home, or being adoptted, or leaving care at 18. In this way, in 10 years time, The Our Family has developed a scheme where it works with about 130 children at any one time, about 35 coming in and about 35 leaving care every year. Also, the Our Family keeps supervising and helping all its graduates until they become 23.
In addition, The Our Family works with about 50 children and families at risk at any one time. These are children who are on child protection register and who are in danger of abandonment and the Our Family service is providing family preservation support services for these families and children.
Some statistics:
‘Our Family' has now helped over 400 children in Moscow, trained more than 550 child-care professionals from 40 Russian regions, initiated essential legislation, and been the catalyst through which 26 regions widespread throughout Russia have already developed similar projects, introducing foster family care, so that over 5,000 children have been able to enjoy the benefits of loving families. Today the model continues to roll our across Russia, with 39 regions now implementing some form of foster family provision, or exploring the possibility of doing so.
Some facts about the Our Family fostering and family support programme:
At the moment The Our Family has 116 children in 98 foster families, and 15 in 3 residential units.
50 children returned home in 2 years time (50%through temporal fostering).
90% are placed with trained and selected foster families.
25% foster children have been adopted by their foster parents in about 3-5 years time.
Only 7% remain in residential unit (adolescents over 16 with attachment disorders).
Remaining 3% have been transferred to other programmes with accordance to their developmental needs.
Breakdown rate for placements is less than 5% due to extensive after placement professional support provided by our services.
Since opening Our family got about 10 thousand incoming telephone calls. Half of them then came for primary interviews and information meetings. Half of those continued cooperation and passed family interviews and decided to continue and applied for training. Our Family has trained about 1000 families. 2/3 of them continued and passed home study assessment and further preparation. 240 fostered children through Our Family, the others - through other baby houses and orphanages.
Our Family Programmes: 10 years of serving children and families in Russia
"Our Family": 10th Anniversary
"Our Family" - the well known and first Russian professional foster care and family preservation programme based on the site of former state orphanage No 19, Moscow, has just celebrated its 10th Anniversary.
The event took place on the 3rd October 2006. The press-conference where major Russian TV channels and newspapers were present was followed by a Gala gathering of more than 350 children, foster and adoptive parents, staff members and birth parents whom The Our Family Programme has helped or worked with for the past 10 years.
The Guests of Honor were Lady Caroline Cox, the mother-founder of the Our Family and the President of HART-UK, Michail Moskvin- Tarchanov, the Deputy of the Moscow Duma, Alexey Golovan, the Moscow Ombudsman for children, Vera Lopatina, The Chairman of the Moscow Central Education Department, and Alexander Litoshin, the Deputy-Prefect of the Moscow Central Division of the Mayor's office of Moscow.
Ella Pamfilova, the Chairman of President Putin Committee for Human Rights, Vladimir Vassiliev, the Chairman of the Committee of the State Duma, Dr. Leonid Roshal, the famous public leader and the director of the children's hospital in Moscow have sent their letters of greetings and support to Our family.
The Gala was opened by an address of the Guests of Honor and 9 chiefs of Local Authorities of Moscow whom The Our Family was closely working with for the last 10years. A joint quire of the Graduates of the Our Family, some of whom were together with their own children starts the concert part presented by the children and foster parents of the programme.
All those present enjoyed it very much as well as the company of each other, the breath-taking videos depicting the 10 years journey that Our Family and all its children, foster families and staff have made, the huge Birthday Cake.
The celebrations ended up with the speech given by Maria Ternovskaya, who is serving as The Our Family Director for all 10 years of its existence and a distribution of numerous life-buoys with children's paintings all over them presented to all foster parents as a symbol to their achievements.
All the staff, foster families and the children are very much thankful to all their English coleagues who have been supporting the Our family programme development and staff training for all these happy and hard 10 years. We would like to address words of gratitude to Lady Cox, Stuart Windsor, Heather Spenser, Derek Moss and all other friends from HART and CSW, Helen Jones and Genny Gray of the Ministry of Children, John Fitsgerald and Renuka Dent from The Bridge, Prof. Christina Lyon & Prof. Chris Jones of the Liverpool University, Richard Servian, Donald Henderson and all their colleagues and foster parents of Dudley Social Services as well as to all the other professionals and friends from many other organizations who were supporting us, sharing their knowledge, time and skills. It is because of their hard work and support Our Family managed to achieve these wonderful results and help so many children in Russia.
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Charity Number: 1011086