You're reading: Children’s ombudsman: Ukrainian orphanages are 60% full

Ukrainian foster homes are 60% full, Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights Yuriy Pavlenko has said.

"Today the occupation level of orphanages totals 60%," he said at the briefing in Kyiv on March 19.

According to him, in the 108 children’s homes where children aged up to seven years are brought up, currently only 4,400 places are filled of a total of 7,400.

As Pavlenko said, of the 17,000 allocated places in foster schools, only 10,000 places are taken.

As the children’s ombudsman also said, every fourth child does not have the status of an orphan or a child deprived of parental care due to the simplification of the procedure for sending children to foster houses.

"We state that for a definite time the foster houses were filled artificially, at the expense of children from socially vulnerable families. Instead of helping the family, state bodies took children away and kept them," Pavlenko said.