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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon.

So, it is Children’s Day. What topic would you like to 

discuss on this occasion?

Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova: Mr President, at our last meeting, you instructed me to carry out a nationwide inspection of the system for the prevention of social orphanhood, with the goal of understanding why children with living parents end up in shelters and become orphans, and what measures can be taken to prevent this.

Vladimir Putin: Exactly.

Maria Lvova-Belova: In response, we conducted extensive work across 89 regions; I personally visited every constituent entity of the Russian Federation. As a result, we now have a clear understanding of how the system currently operates. Since this initiative was undertaken at your instruction, Mr President, all relevant stakeholders gave it their full attention: federal ministries, the Prosecutor’s Office, regional heads and their teams, non-profit organisations, and the presidential plenipotentiaries. It is fair to say that, throughout the year, this issue remained a central focus across the regions.

During the inspection, a key goal was to shift the mindset – from what is often referred to as the “orphan industry” – toward a family-preservation approach. Early in this process, a woman who had previously been deprived of her parental rights but had since changed her way of life and sought reinstatement, came to meet with me personally. This meeting was attended by the deputy chairman of the regional government. Remarkably, the local official recognised in this woman her childhood friend with whom they were in love with the same boy in school days. She was deeply shocked, recalling that when that woman was young she dreamed of a very different future.

This became a pivotal moment for me because I realised that these families are our former neighbours, classmates, or acquaintances. Something went wrong in their lives, something broke down. As civil servants and individuals with the ability to make a difference, it is our responsibility to become a support system and help these families overcome their challenges.

Mr President, how was this inspection carried out? We formed teams, with a group of analysts, lawyers, financial experts and child services officials visiting each region. They analysed and assessed everything – orphanages, shelters, children’s services, and commissions for juvenile affairs. After that a region’s profile would be created and recommendations would be given. That was when I would arrive, meet with the head of the region and the team, issue recommendations, and then we would supervise the region remotely.

We hosted regional forums together with presidential plenipotentiaries. I know that methods that are effective in the Far East will not work in the North Caucasus. We had to find the unique features that would allow us to conduct this work.

We inspected nearly 1,500 various institutions; I have just informed you about them. Mr President, the personal files of children are the most important thing. So, you arrive at an orphanage, take any child’s personal file, and you immediately understand everything about the family and the work done, the reasons for sending the child to the orphanage, and future plans regarding this child. We reviewed 7,000 personal files at random, and in 3,200 cases, the work that was done to remedy the situation was not sufficient – it was possible to help the families of these children, to support them and in some cases to jointly assist them, instead of taking the child away from the family.

Collaboration with the academic community was very important for us. We involved St Petersburg State University, the Higher School of Economics, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Moscow State University of Psychology and Education. We analysed data, conducted research and ranked territories in terms of their situation with social orphanage. I will submit these findings to you a bit later.

Mr President, when we conducted our inspection, we, of course, did not aim to reduce the number of children at orphanages. We found it important to look for, to assess and analyse the best practices. But it so transpired that, when we started tackling all these issues, we managed to reduce the number of children simultaneously staying at orphanages and shelters by 10.2 percent from July 1, 2024, to April 1, 2025, that is, over a period of ten months. The number of children at orphanages went down from 60,061 to 53,900, and this is quite a lot. You should understand that there were many more children over the period of one year, and we are talking about the children staying at an orphanage simultaneously. So, they would come, work and return the children. However, our direct involvement alone made it possible to return over 7,000 children to their birth families.

Mr President, the main conclusion is that 25 percent of children stay at orphanages and shelters without a reason. It was possible to work with the families and assist them without resorting to separation.

Vladimir Putin: This is very important.

Maria Lvova-Belova: You see, I believe that this is a key aspect. Twenty-five percent is a big number.

Vladimir Putin: Yes, it’s a quarter.

Maria Lvova-Belova: Yes, it’s a quarter. For example, no sufficient measures were taken to place children in foster care. It is possible to do this, but it is not being done. It is 25 percent around the country.

What have we observed, what growth points, Mr President? Who are the key players around family? Guardianship, commissions for juvenile affairs, the Interior Ministry. But it is not their task to pull families out of a crisis. They have other tasks: security, guardianship, some administrative penalties. Hence the measures – fines, preventive raids, preventive counselling, separation in cases when it could have been avoided – and, as a result, deprivation of parental rights.

If social services, family curators, rehabilitation centres without separation, and crisis centres for mothers with children come forward… We are actively promoting this trend now. Why take the child away and separate the family? Take the child and their mom and start working with both of them together, because it is easy to place a child into an institution, but it is very difficult to take the child back from there.

A new-format crisis centre opened in the Penza Region. The inspection visits a family, and if it sees that the child cannot be left there, but the mother wants to fight for her child and find a job, we take them to the crisis centre, where the work starts immediately, even if the mother has an addiction. This is also important.

I can tell you that I was sceptical about this. But this is one of the reasons behind social orphanhood. When parents want to overcome their addiction, we must work with them.

There are targeted practices in the regions. We have just held a large nationwide forum in Kaluga, where we discussed these practices with addiction specialists, the Ministry of Healthcare, social services, non-profit organisations, and the parents who had overcome addiction.

Of course, I was influenced by a story I heard. Imagine, somewhere in the Tyumen Region, a dad comes to a personal reception with me: 20 years of addiction, one prison term for theft. At some point, his wife tells him: “Either you quit, or I’m leaving you.” And – people do have a backbone sometimes – he quits. They have a child together, and a year and a half later, a tragedy happens to his wife: she dies from a blood clot. Naturally, he goes crazy, starts drinking, and the child is taken away. When he comes to his senses, he understands that he is ready to do anything for the sake of the child.

The Tyumen Region has an interesting practice when a person undergoes rehabilitation together with the child, so they are not separated, but undergo rehabilitation together for a year. Children go to school or kindergarten, and specialists work with the parents.

So, he underwent rehabilitation for addiction and started working there. When we met, he told me: “You know, my daughter said that other children are envious of her, because it’s mostly moms who undergo rehabilitation, and there are no dads.” He said he became like a dad to all of them, taking them fishing, cycling, or playing football. Recently, we found out that he married a kindergarten teacher with two children and is now raising three.

Mr President, if I had told this story before making a decision about taking the child away, all the specialists would have said: take the child away. Do you see? The recent inspection demonstrated that there is hope and the outlook is positive, and that is the direction we need to follow.

An important aspect is the financial side, Mr President. For the first time, we conducted a thorough analysis of the funding and the full budget allocated for preventing social orphanhood. What did we find? Nearly half of the funds are spent on maintaining children’s homes, shelters, and social rehabilitation centres. This is not due to overcrowding, but because the state mandates for these institutions focus on child maintenance and bed occupancy. Unfortunately, the occupancy rates are often artificially maintained to meet these requirements, even when it was possible to avoid doing that.

What did we begin to propose to the regions? To repurpose existing institutions by assessing the actual need for beds, and to redirect personnel, resources, and facilities toward supporting families. This involved establishing rehabilitation centres, crisis centres for mothers with children, and family support services.

Remarkably, when the regions introduced these changes, there was no surge in social orphanhood. On the contrary, many more families were able to receive help using the same funds and staff, without the need to artificially fill children’s institutions.

Another important issue concerns deprivation and restriction of parental rights. How does this work in our country? Once a parent is deprived or restricted, they are often effectively forgotten by the family support system. Life, however, is complex and constantly changing, people overcome addictions, rebuild their lives, remarry, have children, but how to restore their parental rights remains unclear. Until now, such recoveries were rare and happened mostly against the odds.

As we looked deeper, we realised there is a real need for support in this area. Many regions lacked services and legal professionals specialising in these cases. In our country, even those accused of crimes get a lawyer appointed by the state. Yet, when a family is breaking apart, when the lives of several people are unravelling, there are no defenders or support specialists to assist the family’s restoration.

My commissioners in the regions have done outstanding work by advocating for families in court and actively participating in these cases. In just the first three months of 2025, 430 families had their parental rights restored. For comparison, last year the entire country saw 800 such restorations over the course of twelve months – and this progress is just in three months. This is only the beginning, as there is significant potential to build on.

We visited a children’s home in Mordovia with an inspiring director who shared his experience. He said, “Your approach motivated me deeply. I reviewed the personal files of all the children and identified where there was potential, where parents were still involved or reached out. Taking a proactive stance, I invited those parents to work with us and the relevant support services.”

In just six months, he successfully restored parental rights for ten parents. He explained, “With the resources I freed up – particularly the educators – I transformed them into a service that supports and monitors these families, providing ongoing assistance. At the same time, they took on responsibilities for more families.” This is a compelling and important example that, I believe, deserves wider promotion.

Another thing is the alimony. At the time of crisis, for example, why is it difficult to have the rights restored? While the crisis remains acute, parents keep accumulating alimony, and when they come out of this crisis, they can't pay the debts they have already started to pay. Because they usually have three to five children. These are very large amounts. It appears that they were deprived not for alimony, but for other things. They have remedied all that, but alimony becomes an obstacle to reinstatement.

“We have a debt of 100,000 rubles,” – this is a widespread story. And we keep a child in an institution paying at least 1.5 million a year for that. Because it’s just 100,000, we do not accept lawsuits and do not work with the family. Now we are actually revising these standards regarding alimony debts and working with the judiciary and bailiffs. This is also an issue.

The last thing I wanted to mention is the lack of coordination. We do not have a single person in charge. When you come to a region, you see orphanages and children's homes in different departments, under different deputy heads of government. Even children from the same family are brought to different children's homes: one child to one department, three children to another department. How can this work be organised further? It is not clear.

We ask the regions to appoint one person in charge who will see the entire vertical, who will be responsible for everything, have it all in the same hands. Today, some regions appoint advisors to the governor for social orphanhood prevention. In some regions, this task is assigned to deputy heads of government.

When we carried out the inspection, we decided not to stop only at, say, examination and analysis, but to take the 14 regions with the highest number of children in orphanages and start to implement all this and allocate additional resources.

And, can you imagine, they had such a breakthrough there in just a few months. And you understand that historically, social orphanhood there is already deep-rooted: climatic conditions, the size of the territory, subsidised budgets, and so on. But here, when we start implementing these measures, they do not require any additional substantial investment, just oversight, attention, and a family-saving approach.

The Krasnoyarsk Territory, the Irkutsk Region, and the Sverdlovsk Region have made a good start. I regard them as breakthrough regions, really. Just imagine, they even adopt state programmes in their regions to prevent social orphanhood, which make it possible to respond to all those challenges.

Therefore, Mr President, the inspection is over, and the regions are beginning to introduce some things. The crucial point here is to keep this focus, this coordination, this support and training. I would kindly ask you to make a decision on transforming the nationwide inspection, which you have instructed us to carry out, into the All-Russian Family Support Service.

There will be no need for additional resources, be it financial or personnel. We will be able to rearrange things and work based on the funds allocated for my projects. We will redistribute them. I have prepared a letter for you, a project, and I have coordinated it with relevant ministries.

Vladimir Putin: Which ones?

Maria Lvova-Belova: We have discussed this with the Presidential State-Legal Directorate, the Prosecutor’s Office, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, that is, with all of the agencies concerned. All of them see the results and are aware of the need for coordinating this work. I am sure that the family-saving approach will help us cut the number of children at orphanages by half by 2030, if we continue this work.

Moreover, this concerns not only children at child welfare institutions but also at-risk families that are on file. We have 190,000 children that risk landing at children’s homes. Far from all social orphans stay in children’s homes. There are 340,000 of them across the country, a big figure. I would be very grateful, if you blessed me for this work, because an expert evaluation has been carried out on the national scale, and now we have a thorough knowledge of the matter.

Vladimir Putin: It is a highly needed, incidentally, interesting and, judging by all appearances, productive piece of work. Thank you very much.

Please give me the documents.

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