Opportunities for children with new Child Reform processes

Adoption of the Bill on Social Service will attract more funding from the government for building a new alternative care system for children. Children will be moved from government institutions to long-term foster care, emergency foster care, small group homes and temporary care service. These four services will change the quality of welfare system of children and provide their protection in terms of living with a host family.

The year 2011 ended with good news for World Vision Azerbaijan. The advocacy activities implemented by the Deinstitutionalization Project of World Vision Azerbaijan in collaboration with the NGO Alliance for Children's Rights yielded successful results for the improvement of child-specific national legislation. The Azerbaijani parliamentarians adopted the Law on Social Services in the 3rd (final) reading on December 30, 2011.

The long-awaited bill was discussed at the Parliament twice last year, in May and October, and was sent back to the Social Policy Commission for revision. While deinstitutionalization processes are developing in the country, the given bill is an excellent opportunity for the establishment and development of alternative social services for children. The adoption of law shows that the government has strong willingness and intentions in the implementation of deinstitutionalization as well as child reforms affairs.

This bill also represents the first time that Azerbaijan will train and prepare professional social workers that will work with children. The new bill is considered to protect not only the deinstitutionalized children, but also children from the streets.

The bill will provide the legal basis for alternative care of children in Azerbaijan. After this law is implemented, NGOs and community organizations will be able to create centres and shelters to host the children and benefit from the program opportunities. As the result of the state program, budget will allocate extra funding for the welfare of children and will financially support the host families.

The new bill will create alternative services to institutions (such as day care centres, family support centres, etc.), that families can make use of easily for their children. Also, social workers funded by the government shall be mobilized to work in the field and children will be able to benefit from successful parent-social worker relations.

This law will help to achieve an integrated, community-based child protection system which is accountable at national level, and prevent institutionalization of vulnerable and disabled children. It will also enable the social workers to liaise with health, education and other social services in order to support children/families to access social services.

Adoption of the law will expand the categories of beneficiaries, service deliverers, and will set forth the ways of their financing. The forthcoming adoption of the draft law on “Social Orders” will green light the state financing of the social services delivered by the NGOs.

Adoption of this legislation prompts the need to develop methodologies for training the newly emerging specialties and qualifications in the area of social services. The DI Project already met this demand prior to this new legislation by developing the 9-month curriculum in collaboration with Social Services Initiative NGO. The curriculum designed for developing social workers and re-training or re-qualification of the existing personnel of child institutions was accepted and approved by the Ministry of Education on August 11, 2010. It is now used at Baku In-service Teachers Training and Re-training Institute, and the graduates of “Social Work” specialization have been employed by the State DI Department of the Ministry of Education and several INGOs in Azerbaijan.