Getting married: why children are voluntarily sent to boarding schools
The Department of Social Development of the Tyumen Region said that this year 11 parents voluntarily sent their children to an orphanage due to financial and housing problems and then did not take them back to the family. According to experts, children who have parents who are not deprived of parental rights make up about half of all orphanages in Russia. Despite the fact that their total number is not mentioned in official statistics, special attention should be paid to them.: these are potential and sometimes "hidden" orphans. Izvestia investigated how families in Russia are helped who are forced to temporarily transfer their children to boarding schools.
How many parents have children in orphanages
In 2025, 43 children were abandoned by their parents in organizations for orphaned children at the end of their temporary stay, the Department of Social Development of the Tyumen Region said.
"There are currently 11 such children in 2026. The main reasons are a difficult life situation, material and housing problems," the media quoted officials as saying.
Svetlana Stroganova, program director of the Our Children Foundation, told Izvestia that, according to her data, there are about 25-30 thousand "parent" children in orphanages throughout Russia. We are talking about children who get into organizations for orphaned children at the request of their parents. They are placed in orphanages temporarily, so the number of such children is constantly changing. The statement of the Tyumen region officials refers to the children who were temporarily placed in institutions, but then they were not taken away.
There are no official open statistics on children who were admitted to orphanages at the request of their parents, but these figures can be confirmed by comparing other data. The Commissioner for Children's Rights under the President of the Russian Federation, Maria Lvova-Belova, noted that as of October 1, 2025, the number of children living in Russian orphanages, orphanages, shelters, etc., amounted to 49,061 people. According to the annual document of the Ministry of Education and Science "Information on the identification and placement of orphaned children and children left without parental care," by the end of 2025, about 26.5 thousand children had the official status of "left without parental care." Most likely, the rest are children who were temporarily placed in orphanages at the request of their parents. Elena Alshanskaya, President of the Volunteers to Help Orphaned Children Foundation, confirmed to Izvestia that the resulting number of 22-23 thousand children is close to the real state of affairs.
There are open statistics at the regional level. So, the president of the NGO "Aistenok" (Yekaterinburg) Larisa Lazareva, citing data from the Ministry of Social Policy of the Sverdlovsk region, said that in this region the total number of children who are simultaneously in social service organizations was 1,976 at the end of 2025. At the same time, the number of children who are not orphans and do not belong to the category of children left without parental care, but are permanently in state institutions, amounted to 754 people, that is, about 38%. Statistically, this is close to the data given above.
In the statistics of the Ministry of Education and Science, children who were sent to boarding schools by their parents appear only in one line: these are those who are left by their parents in organizations at the end of their stay. That is, the very guys who were told about in the Tyumen region. In 2025, there were 1,224 such cases across Russia. Of these, 786 were transferred to a family by the end of the year, but 384 had to be moved under the supervision of an organization for orphaned children.
At the time of placing a child in an orphanage, upon the parents' application, a tripartite agreement must be concluded between the parent, the guardianship authority and the organization for orphaned children. It prescribes, among other things, the length of the child's stay and the measures that will be taken if the parent does not pick up the child after its expiration. As a rule, in this case, the management of the orphanage applies to the guardianship authorities, and they already decide to file a claim for the deprivation of parental rights and the transfer of the child to a new status.
Elena Alshanskaya notes that these statistics are not complete either. The placement of children is possible in two parallel systems: children, at the request of their parents, end up not only in orphanages, but also in social rehabilitation centers (SRCs), which are often called shelters, although they are now called completely differently depending on the region.
— The same shelters don't count children at all — they count the so-called passability. These children are not included in the general statistics. There are quite a lot of children there too, and we have been encouraging them to count for a long time," she said.
Pavel Kantor, a lawyer with the legal group of the Center for Curative Pedagogy, a regional charitable public organization, notes that some children may be in medical organizations without explicit indications, "for social reasons." They are also not included in these statistics.
How long have parents' children been living in boarding schools?
The length of stay of children in boarding schools is not clearly spelled out in the legislation. The decree of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 481, which concerns the activities of organizations for orphaned children, actually says "until the end of the foundation" - that is, while the problem persists, because of which the child ended up in a boarding school.
Larisa Lazareva explains that situations can be very different: loss of housing as a result of a fire, divorce with the division of property, when the mother and child remain on the street, the dependence of the parents themselves or family members, when it is impossible to live with children in the same territory, etc.
— Children are placed for a period until a difficult life situation is resolved, for this they write an application to the guardianship and guardianship authorities. The temporary placement of a child in an organization for orphaned children does not terminate the rights and obligations of parents in relation to this child. At the end of the term, if nothing prevents it, the child is sent back to the family," she said.
At the same time, the wording "difficult life situation", according to which children are placed in shelters and orphanages, does not give an understanding of what really happened, said Elena Alshanskaya. Very often this is really a situation where the family simply did not help to cope with the problems, and sometimes these are heavy drinking parents who were not deprived of parental rights in order not to spoil the statistics of the region, but were persuaded to write an application for voluntary placement of the child in an orphanage.
Svetlana Stroganova notes that there are cases when "parental" children have been living in such institutions for years. In fact, until adulthood. These are usually children with severe multiple health disorders — after the orphanage they often end up in the stumps. Pavel Kantor also talks about cases when such a child was constantly kept in a medical organization: after a month of stay, he was discharged, and the next day he was placed there again. In fact, he was there continuously, but from the point of view of statistics, at no point was he in the organization for more than one month.
According to him, "parental" children who do not have disabilities, but who have been living in orphanages for years, often have a family only formally.
How to prevent children from entering boarding schools
In June last year, Maria Lvova-Belova stated that 25% of children are in orphanages unreasonably — it was possible to provide assistance without separation, "to work with the family." Svetlana Stroganova also stressed that children do not always need to be institutionalized, although it all depends on the situation.
If serious problems arise, she advises taking several measures: first, look for charitable foundations to help families with children who work in the region; secondly, look for family and child support centers - sometimes they have services for accommodating children with their parents; thirdly, find free social, psychological and online legal assistance; fourthly, ask for advice from the guardianship authorities, explaining that you do not want to be separated from your child at all.
— Believe me, the guardianship authorities themselves are interested in keeping children in families, this is one of their KPIs. If parents have a desire to keep their children in the family, they can find help," she stressed.
At the same time, Svetlana Stroganova notes, the guardianship authorities do not have many resources at all to work with such a family.: She can "put it on the lookout," have a conversation, or advise you to go to the job exchange. But you can't solve the housing problem: it's the job of social protection or other organizations.
She calls for expanding public-non-profit partnerships so that guardianship authorities can monitor and coordinate, and NGOs can take on the role of direct assistance: humanitarian, social, legal, and psychological. Moreover, she says, there are now more and more projects that, for example, allow a child to be temporarily adopted by a guest family while problems are being solved in the family. The Children of Ours Foundation has such a pilot project in Yaroslavl.
Elena Alshanskaya notes that most of the difficult situations when children end up in shelters or orphanages at the request of their parents would allow comprehensive support, addiction treatment and the provision of at least temporary housing — however, these three points are quite rarely represented in the regions.
However, the system in the country began to be built, primarily around the institution of the Commissioner for Children's Rights. For example, projects aimed at helping families in crisis who are on the verge of abandoning a child are emerging in a number of regions, said Elena Alshanskaya. Social curators of the family appear in the subjects, coordination of various departments is prescribed that can help the child's parents solve the problem.
— Many changes are taking place within the framework of the Challenge project, which is being implemented in 14 regions on the initiative of the Commissioner for Children's Rights. I really hope that these pilot projects will show effectiveness, and this will eventually convince the federal government that something needs to be changed at the national level," said Elena Alshanskaya.
The project, launched by the Commissioner's office, involves the introduction of a family-oriented approach and comprehensive work with families in the Altai, Trans-Baikal, Krasnoyarsk, Perm, Primorsky, Khabarovsk Territories, Arkhangelsk, Irkutsk, Kemerovo, Orenburg, Samara, Sverdlovsk, Tver, Chelyabinsk regions. Maria Lvova-Belova predicts that by the end of 2026, the number of children in residential institutions in these regions will decrease by 25%.
Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova
State Duma deputy Tatyana Butskaya also recalled another project of the commissioner: in the spring, Lvova-Belova headed the Children's Protection Fund, which will help families in difficult life situations: fix the stove, bring firewood, treat parents for alcoholism, and so on.
— Families should understand that we have thousands of support measures in our country. And if you see that it's hard for you and you can't cope, then you can always find a social support service in your region's administration or contact the family MFC. If you are suddenly told in a social institution that there is no help, contact an NGO. For example, to our Council of Mothers, where they can also help in a difficult life situation," said the deputy.
Izvestia also sent requests to the Ministry of Education and the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights.
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