Minister on adoption in Latvia: people want children no older than five
Painful questions in Latvia and often promises to find more funding for pensioners have been present in the country’s government halls for years. The difficult topics regarding orphanages and support of families that have disabled children do not become easier with time either. Why is social inequality Latvia’s bleeding wound? This and other topics were discussed by BNN with Latvia’s Welfare Minister Ramona Petravi?a.
«Adoption in Latvia – nearly all potential parents pick children aged three to five years. Preference given to girls»
One of the main priorities for the new welfare minister is improving adoption rates in Latvia and making sure orphanages provide family-like conditions for children. Petravi?a says Latvia already has a long queue of people waiting to adopt children. Unfortunately, the problem is that nearly all potential parents want children three to five years old. On top of that, the main demand is for girls.
«The situation is especially hard for disabled children – they are picked for adoption far less often than other children,» the minister said.
Low benefits represent one of the reasons why disabled children and not often adopted. «Parents are unable to leave work. Additionally, disabled children require parents to be present all the time. However, a situation in which a child is put in an orphanage costs the state far more – care of such a child in a social care centre costs the state EUR 800 a month,» said the minister.
It should be added that families with children suffering from a serious disability receive benefit of EUR 106.72 in addition to the family state benefit, as well as special care benefit of EUR 213.43.
The minister says the government has allocated only EUR 8.6 million for this year’s welfare sector’s priorities. She proposed allocating EUR 2.7 million of the aforementioned amount to increase benefits for disabled children. This means the current amount of EUR 213 could reach EUR 313 this year.
According to the ministry’s latest data, there are 621 children in need of adoption in Latvia. 405 of them are older than ten and 160 children are invalids.
It should be said that between January 2016 and December 2018, a total of 18 disabled children were adopted in Latvia by local and foreign families. At the same time, the minister said four disabled children in Latvia are currently in the middle of their adoption process.
In relation to ways of contributing to children’s adoption in Latvia, Petravi?a said the following: «We are working on a pilot project to help provide apartments for young parents with disabled children. Those apartments have to be fitted with everything disabled children may need. If it is not possible to find families for them, they could settle in those apartments. Still, this idea is in a pilot project stage,» said the minister.
Meanwhile, to resolve the situation and expand integration opportunities for disabled people, the minister plans to become more involved in the process of helping those people find jobs. To make the process more effective, Petravi?a says it is necessary to amendment Labour Law, because employers are reluctant to employ disabled people, because it is hard to fire them if things don’t work out.
To improve the situation with adoption in the country, the minister plans to implement a new form of support for adopters – a child adoption benefit for every adopted child. The planned benefit amount is EUR 107.50 a month per child aged under six and EUR 129 a month for a child aged seven to eighteen years.
She believes it is not possible to put an end to orphanages, but it is possible to reduce the number of orphans. «I have no dreams of completely shutting down orphanages. However, I do want to make them [orphanages] as close to family-like as possible for children – making sure no more than eight children live in one house».