Welfare State and Child Welfare Reform in Russia in the 2010s

Russia is now undergoing a major child welfare reform that builds on the idea of every child’s right to grow up in a family. The reform strives to dismantle the massive system of children’s homes by promoting domestic adoptions, developing a foster family system and creating support services for families to prevent “social orphanhood” (sotsial’noe sirotstvo). The official goal, that nine of ten children left without parental care would live in the families, can be seen as a significant institutional change, since until now, institutional care has heavily dominated the field in Russia. Institutional placements will be an option also in the future, but a great part of resources will probably be directed towards the development of the foster family system. In the Russia of the 2010s, the well-being of children is envisioned as thriving in the private sphere, whereas the duty of the state is to create high-quality structures to support the work done in families. The new programs of the reform also promote partnerships between the state, NGOs, and businesses, which opens up avenues for new actors to step into the field of child welfare. The on-going reform can be conceptualized as deinstitutionalization – meaning the closing of large institutions as well as development of a foster family system and support services for families. The Paper analyzes the on-going child welfare reform through an investigation of the major national level policy documents of the reform in order to understand the prevailing welfare state ideology behind the reform. Russia’s traditional state-led system of social welfare can ideologically be labelled as state paternalism. The new programs on child welfare – as social policies more generally – seem to entail elements this ideology alongside the new famil-oriented approach, though they are often contradictory to one or another. In addition to the welfare state ideology, the examination of the child welfare reform will open ways to understand both changes in the conception of the family and of what constitutes a good life for a child, and children’s rights.