The creation of a single database has allowed detecting another 280 children in social risk in the Vitebsk Oblast, said Tamara Olekhnovich, Deputy Chairperson of the Underage Affairs Commission of the Vitebsk Oblast Executive Committee, at a session of the oblast coordinating council on 29 March. The database combines not only data sent by education boards, police departments and commissions for affairs of the underage but information sent by Emergencies Ministry specialists and medics, who visit families. Tamara Olekhnovich stressed that it is not “scary data. We have to detect all children and help them and their parents”. According to the oblast commission, as of 1 March there were 3,398 children in social risk in the area. Since decree No 18 “Additional state protection for children in troubled families” came into force, 1,958 have been recognized as those in need of the state protection, 60% of them have returned to their biological families. In the oblast special attention is paid to the prevention of family ill-being. Medics have started participating in it along with pedagogues, law enforcement agencies, guardianship and wardship authorities, underage affairs commissions. Medics are the first government officials to come to families to patronage infants. If a family is troubled, guardianship and wardship authorities and commissions for affairs of the underage join in the work, said Tamara Olekhnovich, explaining the Vitebsk Oblast’s prevention scheme. BelTA

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