Children can literally be "taken to Sienkevych": Mykolaiv is critically short of foster (patronage) families

In Mykolaiv, to fully meet the needs of the community it is necessary to create at least 14–15 patronage families, however currently there are only 4, which does not allow for proper protection of children who have found themselves in difficult life circumstances. This was discussed during the meeting of the deputy commission on human rights, children, family, legality and transparency on 21 April 2026.

The head of the Children’s Service of the Mykolaiv City Council, Yuliia Kravchenko, reported that changes to legislation in the field of child rights protection are being proposed at the state level. At the same time, these initiatives envisage expanding the powers of local self-government bodies without additional funding. In particular, in the absence or shortage of patronage families, the functions of the patronage caregiver are to be carried out by the mayor.

A patronage family is a temporary form of placement for a child who has found themselves in difficult life circumstances. In such a family the child receives care, upbringing and support until their biological family overcomes the difficulties or until another permanent form of placement is found.

“If our community lacks patronage families — and they really are lacking. And, unfortunately, we have no queue of such people. Roughly speaking, we would have to bring a child who was removed from their parents due to improper fulfillment of parental duties into the mayor’s office and then the mayor would have to provide the patronage,” explained the head of the Children’s Service Yuliia Kravchenko.

According to the official, such a provision is meant to encourage communities to more actively create patronage families, but under current conditions this is difficult to implement: only 1 candidate out of 3 confirmed readiness and is awaiting training, and about 75% of communities do not have such families at all.

“A round-the-clock work mode for children’s services is envisaged, connecting them to the ‘112’ response system. How many staff should there be, what salary should they receive so that they agree to work in such a mode? Currently there is a real problem with staff turnover, because the psychological, emotional and physical burden and the risk to life and health for children’s service workers forces them to leave their jobs,” the official drew attention to the innovations.

The commission also discussed creating a Family and Child Support Center in Mykolaiv, which would help prevent crisis situations in families. However, due to martial law and the city’s frontline location, it is currently impossible to implement such an initiative.

Her position on the proposed changes was expressed

“Such an initiative right now, during wartime, for communities like Mykolaiv cannot be acceptable for implementation. Or it should require other measures from the state, including funding specific institutions, as was previously the case,” the chair of the commission Olena Kiselova expressed.

Following the meeting, deputies plan to prepare an appeal to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, the relevant ministry and the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine with proposals to take the community’s remarks into account.