The Fragmentation of Responsibility in the Sphere of Orphanhood

Abstract

There are common ways of understanding the factors of deprivation that lead to orphanhood. This includes a dysfunctional social structure, the failure of institutions to promote ‘socialisation’ and the specific circumstances of the individual family as they face the battle to survive and prosper in the challenging environment of Post-Soviet Russia. This article focuses more on the variety of institutions involved in this question and the need for cooperation between them. However, this is proving difficult in the context of the establishment of the ‘vertical of power’ in Russia, whereby a focus on top-down management style along a vertical is reducing institutional independence, identity and effectiveness. This results in a failure to communicate along the horizontal lines that should, in theory at least, exist between institutions involved in the execution and drafting of social policy. This in turn, brings the creation of ruptures between these key organizations in the areas of communication and coordination of activities and projects. The approach here is to review some of the cases of how people experience these institutional deficiencies, working on interviews gathered in Krasnodarsky Krai in April 2008 with those involved in providing social care to orphans. The interviews show the sharp dividing lines of responsibility that has emerged between bodies involved in the care of orphans and their willingness to maintain rigid institutional priorities over the bigger picture of how to care for these families. This qualitative approach allows a better understanding of why orphans are still appearing and how preventative work is failing. It also opens up the question of parental responsibility and the poor attitude they take when engaging with care professionals. Overall, the problem of organisations contradicting each other rather than reinforcing and complementing remains of central importance. As long as the people working in this sector remain bureaucrats at heart, merely following departmental guidelines and failing to sympathise, little progress will be made to combat the problem of fragmented responsibility.