13:47, 15 November 2008

Rostov Region sums up Year of Family

On November 14, Rostov-on-Don hosted a roundtable on the Year of Family that Russia had announced in 2008. The participants were officials of the respective ministries of the region.

According to Tatiana Bykovskaya, regional health minister, this year family support in the region has become more essential and noticeable. The result is in positive demographic changes: in the first nine months of 2008, 33,838 babies were born, two thousand more than for the same period of 2007. Death rate in infantile has also went down.

However, the problem of social orphanage is still pressing for the region. Currently, the region operates 7 babies' homes with 475 kids and 39 children's homes with 1700 children left without parental care. In the last two years, 5 such establishments were closed, since the Ministry of General and Vocational Education is actively accommodating children into families. Every year, more than 400 pupils of babies' and children's homes find their adoptive families.

Author: Vera Voloshinova, CK correspondent