The guardianship of the child of 20-year-old Zaruhy Petrosyan who died as a result of domestic violence, was given to the child's grandmother, the person who, as Zaruhy's close friends claim, regularly  used violence against her daughter-in-law. Do you think the Guardianship Committee of the Nork-Marash administrative district made a correct decision? And how do you assess the work of such committees in our country in general?

In our country, the responsibility of making most serious decisions about children is imposed on a non-professional structure: guardianship committees are non-professional structures, they are not motivated. As a rule, such committees are composed of randomly selected people who have some other occupation; each of them has concrete job responsibilities and parallel to it, as public duty, is a member of a committee and participates in its works. And since they do this work as public duty, you can't expect high motivation and professionalism from them. As a rule one person does the job in such committees, others simply come and sign under the decision. This is a problem for all communities. There are separate successful cases when guardianship committees really do good job, but these are just some cases.  

The law seems to determine how to protect child's interests, but the law does not define what "the child's best interest" is and it is impossible to define it by law; one has to be a specialist to be able to see the child's best interest and try to protect it. People working in guardianship committees are guided by their social experience, their own views and intuition. Once or in the best case twice they visit the parties. Depending on the impression that the people they meet during those short meeting have on them, on how convincing they can be, they make decisions, which, therefore, can be very subjective. This is the general problem - the committee commits a one-time action, there is a procedural problem here. 

How do guardianship committees function in other countries? What is the procedure there?

In general, in other countries the decision-making is reserved not to guardianship committees but to social workers who instead of making one-time visits work on every case day after day. Children are temporarily moved to a safe place - it can be a children's home, a care center, some relative's home and they start studying them. Maximum in ten days a detailed study has to be made finding out positive and negative sides, existing risks, possible risks etc. The thoroughly described situation has to be presented to the Children's protection department which is the body making final decision and it is a specialized structure.

We established Children's protection departments at municipalities; their employees had passed special trainings. However, the responsibility of making decisions in problematic, difficult cases still stayed with guardianship committees. Children's protection departments essentially have no influence on it.

As for guardianship committees, they have had fragmentary training - they have done some things, have not done some others, their information is very superficial. As a rule, they do this job due to their intuitive abilities, their social experience but not their professional abilities. Intuition may be correct as well as the experience but that cannot be a basis for making decisions.  

What is the solution of the problem of guardianship of Zaruhy Petrosyan's child in your opinion?

The case of Zaruhy's child has to be reviewed by the Children's protection department. Decisions of guardianship committees are usually final but that does not mean they cannot be changed or criticized. If there is a complaint that the child has not been placed correctly, the Children's protection department of the provincial administration has to take care of it (we have such departments in all provinces) since NGOs can at the best raise noise that a mistake was made and nothing more. The Children's protection department is the body that can raise the case, review it and influence the decision-making.

I share the concern of NGOs and agree with them. They have even written a letter asking how we can influence the situation as a specialized organization involved in children's protection. We were not involved in Zaruhy's case, and ethically I don't consider it right to suddenly interfere and deal with the guardianship of the child when we do not have complete information about the case. If I get involved in the case, I have to be at least convinced that Zaruhy's sister wants, can and is ready to undertake the child's guardianship. She might have said that she would take care of the child in the moment of emotional outburst, feeling herself obliged before her sister, but then she changed her mind realizing that she could not do it, she would like to, but she couldn't.

I don't know what were the motivations of the woman, who killed her daughter-in-law, to undertake the guardianship of the child born by the same daughter-in-law; usually in such cases they reject also the child preferring to send it to children's home. I don't know, I can't judge unless I have complete information. But I need to understand the mechanisms and convince the guardianship committee that unfortunately they are judging only by material possessions - housing, income etc; but material security is not the only necessary condition for keeping other's children, human features of the person are also important, how expedient is the choice... After all, this child by its existence will remind the woman the tragedy that occurred, that she had been involved in it and that her son is in prison now due to it. This child, while young, will be pitied, and after growing up will become target of aggression. When the child grows up and learns from aside that this is the grandmother that takes care of her and at the same time has killed her mother, the child will develop alternating personality.

I have examined 26 failed cases of adoption; their study shows that only material conditions of candidates have been taken into consideration without paying attention to their personal qualities, parenting skills, without measuring the risk. We are giving the child to a person who is heading to the sunset of her life. When the child grows 16, her grandmother may not be alive. I don't even speak about the fact that she can be too old and probably not be able to understand problems of teenagers; there may be conflict of generations.

In normal countries the person who has more capacity would be considered the best choice for a child in such a situation; I don't mean material but human capacity. If they saw that the sister had a very big wish and human capacity but no material conditions, and the child would feel more protected with her aunt, the state would materially support the woman - would give her some allowance, humanitarian aid, find sponsors for her. In our country the approach is different - who to find not to be bothered again, so that they do not expect support from us. That is why they give children to those who have more money. We have a state that tries to get rid of the burden, hence we have what we have. Unfortunately, Zaruhy's daughter's case is not the only one.               

What solutions do you suggest? What can be done to avoid decisions unfavorable for children?

I think that in all conflicting, difficult situations the guardianship committees by all means have to be obliged to get professional conclusions from professional centers before making decisions.

The state has to oblige professional service to study the case in quiet conditions. It can be done by our center or by some other private service, day-care center etc. Psychologists, social workers, pedagogues have to work with the child and parents and give professional conclusions on what the child wants, what is good for the child. The guardianship committee has neither possibility, nor professional capacity to do such studies. Let the committee first read the conclusion and then make a decision. This is what the world does.

Do you know what makes me very angry? Our country allows itself inadmissible luxury because it is already 10 years that we have a specialized structure that is not used. We are the ones that all the time remind about its existence but in vain. The procedure has to be changed. We have no other goal here, our money does not increase or decrease because of that, we are striving for the best interest of the child. 

With the help of your organization the institute of foster families was implemented in Armenia but the process seems to have frozen up. What is the reason, why hasn't the number of such families grown as planned?     

The number of foster families is maintained but there are no new placements, and the project is indeed in stagnation. The state explains it by the lack or insufficiency of funds. I do not quite agree with it since the same state spends huge funds on institutions and if it wished it could readdress those sums. Even keeping children in foster families would have been cheaper than in children's homes. But there exists system reproduction inertia, and no matter how many innovative ideas we implement, the system seeks to return to its former state. We are used to working like that, it is easier, and it is quite difficult to abandon that familiar practice. We need political will, motivation for that. We need someone at the top to bang his fist on the table and say - we have to work like this, we will go this way. Making changes from the bottom is difficult.

In what direction does the world move in child protection?

The world follows children's best interest, and that is the most important thing. Best interest can be different for different children. Do you know when the state gains? When it has a choice, different versions, and chooses the best one for each case; when it is not either family or children's home, and the child is somehow adapted to the situation. When there is no choice, it cannot be the best interest of the child.

The procedure is the most difficult problem. In our country, we see all rights of the child in the light of educational right. We place the child deprived of family care in a boarding school to provide free education for him when the child first of all needs care. The procedure mistake is here. All the rights of the child are sidelined, we respect only the education right that is why all our mechanisms work for children under 16.

Interview by Mary Alexanyan

Source - www.hra.am