ASTANA – Nearly 60,000 children aged 0-17 years across five countries in Central Asia live in residential care, according to a new policy brief published by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Aug. 15.
Children in institutions are deprived of the social, emotional and intellectual stimulation that is critical for the healthy development of their brains. Photo credit: Galina Sorokina/UNICEF Kazakhstan.
Despite the well-known and devastating impact of family separation and child institutionalization, there are an estimated 203 children for every 100,000 children, on average, living in residential care across Central Asia, almost double the global average of 105 per 100,000.
“The rate of children in residential care can reflect the strength of a country’s child protection system, with a higher rate signaling a system that is failing to keep families together,” said Regina De Dominicis, UNICEF Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia.
“We know that the impact of institutionalization on children is severe and can last a lifetime so urge greater investments in family support services. No child should ever be placed in alternative care because of poverty, disability or challenging behavior, or because their family lacks access to services they need to care for their own child at home,” she added.
Shut away from mainstream society, children in institutions are vulnerable to violence, neglect and abuse. In later life, children who have grown up in institutional care are more likely to face continued exclusion from society, more likely to struggle with alcohol and drug abuse, and more likely to experience violence, arrest and imprisonment. The long-term impact is so damaging that it is harder to reunite children who have been institutionalized for prolonged periods of time with their biological parents or place them with relatives or in other forms of family-based alternative care, reads the report.
The policy brief also highlights the alarming link between children’s disability and their likelihood of being in residential care. Except for Kazakhstan, the share of children with disabilities in residential care increased between 2015 and 2021. It provides a stark example of deep-rooted social norms and limited community-based services for children with disabilities.
In the four Central Asian countries with available data, children with disabilities accounted for between 24% of all children in residential care facilities in 2021 in Kazakhstan, rising to 87% in Turkmenistan.
UNICEF has developed several policy recommendations that facilitate the closure of large-scale institutions by 2030 and assist with the reintegration of children into families. Those include implementing effective childcare reforms to keep children with their families where possible, investing in family support services and social service workforce, securing stronger support for extended family members, and protecting children in alternative care against violence, neglect and abuse, among other measures.
