Timely identification of family distress by educational institutions based on signals from state organizations contributes to reducing orphanhood and decriminalizing the adolescent environment

As a result of the consistently carried out work on the implementation of the requirements of the Decree of the President of the Republic of Belarus of 24.11.2006 No. 18 "On Additional Measures for State Protection of Children in Unfavorable Families", a stable downward trend in the number of orphaned children is observed. Over the past eight years, the number of orphaned children has decreased by 25.5%. As a result of the reduction in social orphanhood, the fertile ground for the spread of juvenile delinquency has been largely eliminated, the level of which has also decreased by 4 times during the same period.

The work of prevention entities to promptly identify cases of children needing state protection, including information from interested departments and services about cases of family distress, contributed to this situation.

However, the exhaustive list of state organizations as informants has not been legally defined, although in fact many of them, due to the specifics of their activities, possess information about children living with parents who are idlers, alcoholics, drug addicts, thieves, hooligans (territorial units of the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Belarus for the Vitebsk region, RUP "Vitebskenergo", "Vitebskoblgaz", etc.). Other problematic issues of interaction between prevention entities (mechanisms and timelines for transferring such information, quality of social investigations, legal grounds for informing are "scattered" in various laws – Decree No. 18, the Code of Marriage and the Family, the Criminal Procedure Code, the Civil Procedure Code, etc.) have also been left "outside the brackets" of legislation.

In this regard, the Prosecutor's Office of the Vitebsk region has prepared a unified Regulation on interaction for identifying cases of children in a socially dangerous situation. This Regulation has been agreed upon with the heads of 10 main regional services and departments – the Department of Internal Affairs of the Regional Executive Committee, the institution "Vitebsk Regional Department of the Ministry of Emergency Situations", the Vitebsk Regional Court, the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Belarus for the Vitebsk region, the departments of education, healthcare and housing and communal services, the Committee for Labor, Employment and Social Protection of the Regional Executive Committee, RUP "Vitebskenergo", RUP "Vitebskoblgaz".

Such a unified act of an organizational and practical nature has been adopted in the region, and according to our information, in the republic for the first time.

Senior Assistant Prosecutor of the Vitebsk Region Anton Volkov