On paper and in reality: “Boarding schools shouldn’t be closed” (video)
“Boarding schools shouldn’t have been closed, it is certain; they were intended for children, who were deprived of parental care or who are from socially disadvantaged families, as well as for children with mental problems. It was a way of temporary aid, which was provided to socially vulnerable families so that those families be able to survive,” noted Lena Hayrapetyan, Head of Department of Family, Women and Children’s Issues of the RA Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, during “On paper and in reality” program. She says that they were temporary and must have been closed, as they contradicted to a child’s right to live in a family. “Families of the children living in boarding schools were in the center of state’s attention, they received benefits. Their needs were always examined, and if it was possible to return the child to the family through little aid, such programs were carried out.” Karine Antonyan, President of the Fund for Children’s Rights Defense, thinks that boarding schools should operate. “Even during Soviet era, when there wasn’t such level of unemployment, so many socially disadvantaged families, yet, there were boarding schools. Yet now not all the issues have been solved. I think that if there were such institutions in Soviet country, now they are simply necessity in Armenia.”
