Shelter

Here is a blog post about one of the facilities where I work. Once or twice a week my group of volunteers is sent to what we call "shelter." It is a temporary home for children who've been taken from unstable families. The kids live, sleep, eat, and play there. If they are school-aged, they go to school during the school year. I haven't been inside much, but I get the idea that it's like a daycare center, plus beds for nighttime. There are about 10 to 15 kids living there, aged about three to ten.
How do the kids get there, you ask? I am still learning about social services in Russia, but this is what I gather. A family might be reported by neighbors or someone who notices kids who are not in a good situation. (And maybe there are other ways they pick families to check.) A state-sponsored social worker makes a surprise visit to the home and evaluates the parents according to a number of criteria, such as the sobriety of the parents, the amount of food currently in the home, and whether the parents know the whereabouts of their kids. If the home is decided to be a bad environment for the kids, the kids are sent to shelter. The live there for about six months to a year, until their parents get it together or until the kids ultimately go to an orphanage. I don't know the official count or anything, but some kids do get to go home again. They do not all end up in an orphanage.
So what we do at shelter is just hang out with the kids. The weather has been pretty nice so we have played outside every day. We do a craft project, play games, color, do puzzles, play on the playground, etc. Playing in the sandbox is my personal favorite activity. The kids there are great. They act just like normal kids, even though I'm sure they're feeling confused (and who knows what other feelings) about why they aren't with their parents. One day one of them, a five-ish-year-old boy named Vasily, talked about his parents a little. The translator told me that he said his mom and dad were coming in an airplane to visit him. (This is wishful thinking, because his parents probably live here in Yaroslavl.) Vasily said we could not see the airplane in the sky at that time because the airplane was taking a nap. Or drinking milk. Funny, I know. Well, funny and sad. The translator also told me that a psychologist thinks Vasily has a psychological disorder. I think maybe he has some form of autism. The shelter is an interesting place. I guess the kids just need love and socialization, and I guess we provide that for a few hours every week.
I should probably say a bit about Russian orphanages. Something interesting I learned is that many of the "orphans" are not orphans by definition (i.e. having dead parents). Many of the orphans are actually social orphans, kids whose parents don't take care of them. The translators here have told me that most of the kids in orphanages won't get adopted if they are older than a couple years old. In that case, they stay in the orphanage until they are 18, at which age they are given an apartment from the state and a small amount of money to live on or study with. I can't really say much more because I haven't seen an orphanage here (or anywhere, I guess). All I'll say is that that must be a terrible way to grow up and it is likely that not many orphanage kids are primed to become normal, healthy adults. I'm guessing. Let's be honest - I don't know any grown-up former orphans.