The Main Difficulties in the Activities of the Specialists of the Substitute Family Support Services

The article presents an analysis of the “Monitoring to determine the need to increase the level of competence of specialists of services involved in the training of persons wishing to adopt a child into a family, accompanying substitute families”, provided by the Department of State Policy in the field of Protection of Children’s Rights of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation. The article is devoted to the study of difficulties in the activities of specialists of support services for substitute families. Monitoring conducted by the Federal Resource Center for Guardianship and Guardianship of the Federal State Budgetary Institution “Center for the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Children” revealed problems that are common to all subjects of the Russian Federation. For more precise identification of problem areas in the work of specialists, an additional study was conducted. The target group included 90 specialists of support services (psychologists, social educators) aged from 23 to 56 years, with work experience from 1 to 5 years. The purpose of the study was to describe the difficulties, their typology and the possibility of prevention in the work. A questionnaire based on the method of unfinished sentences was used, adapted for the study and ranking of difficulties. The results made it possible to identify common problems and difficulties for all subjects of the Russian Federation: the lack of a unified position and view on the content, goals and values of support; the lack of standards for the activities of support services in Russia; the diversity of law enforcement practice within the framework of existing legislation; the lack of uniform requirements for the competencies of specialists engaged in this activity. A separate list highlights the problem areas of specialists “in the field” insufficient level of knowledge about the family and children who are accompanied, lack of methodological literature, lack of modern methods of studying children to clarify complex problems, etc. The ways of solving organizational issues of the support services are proposed, contributing to minimizing difficulties and risks, improving the effectiveness of assistance to substitute families, including the development of criteria for choosing the form of support depending on the availability of specialists and resources, attracting volunteers to the work of thematic clubs, communication in social networks and messengers, as part of remote support.

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