December 18, the Government House welcomed a meeting of the Commission on Minors' Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Belarus with the participation of Deputy Prime Minister Igor Petrishenko.

The meeting was attended by heads of republican government bodies, government organizations, chairmen of regional executive committees, and the Minsk City Executive Committee.

The parties discussed problematic issues of reimbursement of expenses for the maintenance of children in state care; fulfillment of the requirements of the National Mechanism for Assistance to minors who suffered from sexual violence and exploitation as well as the approval of the work plan of the CMA for 2024.

The leadership of the Ministry of Education noted that in Belarus a certain system of interaction between state bodies has been formed to implement measures aimed at the re-socialization and involvement in work of persons obligated to reimburse the state’s expenses for keeping children in state care.

Coordination of work to implement the Decree of the President of the Republic of Belarus “On additional measures for state protection of children in disadvantaged families” is entrusted to regional (Minsk City) and district coordination councils, which include representatives of education, health, internal affairs, labor, employment and social protection, compulsory enforcement, prosecutors and other interested persons.

The organization of interdepartmental work to identify an unfavorable situation for children, coordination of interaction with families on the part of various services and departments made it possible to stabilize the main indicators of the socially dangerous situation of minors and direct efforts to provide assistance to children and families where social disadvantage occurs.

Locally, certain work is carried out with parents who are obliged to reimburse the expenses spent by the state on keeping their children who are on state support, to recover such expenses. Currently, there are 15.1 thousand children on state support.

Some work is being done to establish parent-child relationships and organize the participation of parents deprived of parental rights in their upbringing with the aim of restoring their parental rights through the courts. Over the first 9 months of this year, 49 children were returned to their parents and their parental rights were restored.

Regional and Minsk city monitoring groups analyzed interdepartmental work to identify situations unfavorable for children in families, conduct social investigations, organize the work of district coordination councils to recognize children as being in a socially dangerous situation and eliminate such a situation, remove children from the register, and collect the costs of maintaining children on state support.

Specialists from internal affairs bodies and enforcement agencies are required to be involved in the study in order to take prompt measures to improve the efficiency of work with parents who are obliged to reimburse the costs of maintaining children who are on state support.

The work to improve the effectiveness of measures aimed at the resocialization of obligated persons will continue.