Homelessness

HOMELESSNESS. - Child homelessness is the abandonment of children, largely deprived of parents, without shelter and rational care. A resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR of March 8, 1926, recognizes as homeless and in need of full provision and upbringing: a) full orphans who have no brothers or sisters who would be obligated and able to take over their care; b) those who have lost contact with parents and relatives; c) those removed from the family by a court order or a juvenile commission; d) foundlings. Recognized as needing protection, temporary, or partial assistance are: a) those who have become homeless due to a severe illness or disability (depriving them of full working capacity) of their parents or guardians, if the latter do not receive an allowance from the state, or children in the care of a single mother deprived of any earnings and support; b) those who have become homeless due to the temporary absence of their parents or guardians (imprisonment, hospital stay, etc.). Rooted in the social conditions of capitalist society, homelessness is widespread in the West and, as a legacy of that system, in our country. In capitalist countries, proletarian children are frequently left to the power of the street. According to Otto Rühle, in Germany, the percentage of working women's children left without any supervision is: at the age of 2-3 years - 5.2%, 4-6 years - 7.6%, 7-10 years - 32%, and 11-14 years - 64%. In view of the absence of special statistics on child homelessness in the West, juvenile delinquency is used as its indicator, having increased, for example, in Germany by 58.5% and in Austria by 80% between 1880 and 1900. During the imperialist war, juvenile delinquency increased fourfold in Berlin. A sharp impetus to the development of child homelessness is given by such social disasters as famine, war, and unemployment; thus, in the USSR, the famine of 1921 caused a sharp increase in child homelessness. At present in the USSR, child homelessness, as a legacy of war and famine, has been largely overcome: the overwhelming majority of children have been placed in orphanages, agricultural colonies, and other children's institutions; the older ones have been organized into production artels or found a place in production. The scale of child homelessness can be judged by relative indicators, such as the number of children placed in children's institutions. There were: in 1917 - 29,666 people,

in 1926 - 206,737 people. Social composition of children in children's institutions (in %): children of peasants - 54.5, workers - 23.3, office workers - 9.0, artisans and handicraftsmen - 5.8, Red Army soldiers - 3.2, and others - 4.2. By family status: orphans - 67%, semi-orphans - 29.5%, having parents - 3.5%. By age: 3 to 7 years - 15%, 8-13 years - 57.1, 14-16 years - 20.9, older than 16 years - 7.0%. Similar data were also obtained for homeless children who passed through the Commission for Juvenile Lawbreakers. The fight against homelessness. The radical eradication of homelessness is connected with the elimination of its causes and depends on raising the economic welfare and socio-living standard of the masses. Special measures to combat homelessness are: 1) transfer to the care of relatives or other persons; 2) placement in working people's families with the provision of material support and various benefits to the latter; 3) placement in children's institutions of various types; 4) placement in industrial and agricultural labor institutions (entrusted to the People's Commissariat of Labor by a decree of September 21, 1925); 5) placement of lawbreakers who do not respond to medical and pedagogical intervention in labor houses, colonies, and other institutions of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs; 6) provision of material and other assistance at home; 7) placement for work in educational and production workshops, vocational schools and technical schools, transfer for training to cooperative associations, as well as individual artisans and handicraftsmen; 8) appointment of guardianship and placement under the supervision of an investigator-educator, children's social inspector, or a person designated by public organizations. In the USSR, the Soviet public played and plays a huge role in the fight against homelessness - the work of the Komsomol and volunteer squads for combating homelessness, and the organization "Friend of the Children," numbering about 1 million members. The organization, general management, and implementation of all measures to combat child homelessness are entrusted to the Commissariats of Education of the union republics. The management of all children's institutions for combating homelessness is concentrated in the Department for the Social and Legal Protection of Minors (SPON), with the exception of special labor houses and colonies for lawbreakers under the jurisdiction of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs and institutions for sick children subordinate to the People's Commissariat of Health. The coordination and unification of the activities of public organizations in the fight against homelessness with the activities of state bodies and assistance to the work of these organizations are entrusted to the Commission for Improving the Lives of Children under the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and to local commissions under individual Central Executive Committees and executive committees. In the RSFSR, the following amounts were allocated for the maintenance of children's institutions for the homeless: in 1924/25 - 45 million rubles (27% of the budget of the People's Commissariat of Education), in 1925/26 - 43 million rubles (17%), and in 1926/27 - 45 million rubles (13% of the budget of the People's Commissariat of Education). This does not include funds provided by the commissions for improving the lives of children, the Lenin homeless relief funds, the "Friend of the Children" society, and revenues from enterprises (workshops, state farms) attached to children's institutions for the homeless. While in the West there are many supporters of the theory of "moral defectiveness" of vagrant children and juvenile delinquents and repressive measures predominate in dealing with them, Soviet legislation views homelessness as a social calamity and juvenile delinquency associated with it as a kind of social disease, shifting the center of gravity to the re-education of the homeless person. Alcoholism, narcotism, and the disorganization of the sexual life of the homeless are consequences of their social neglect. Among the diseases common among the homeless are skin diseases (scabies, ringworm), trachoma, and venereal diseases among adolescents. The SPON reception center, which is the primary point for intercepting a homeless child and isolating them from the ordinary environment, sends children to an observation and testing station; here the child is thoroughly studied by a educator and a doctor and, depending on their characteristics and condition, is sent to an educational, auxiliary, or medical-pedagogical institution. The difficulty of accustoming the homeless to children's institutions and the constant escapes of children led to working with the homeless on the street through student squad members, assistance cells at factory committees, and the creation of clubs for the homeless under the juvenile commissions (Komnes), children's night shelters, workshops, and labor colonies-communes. Among special institutions funded by the Commission for Improving the Lives of Children under the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, 1927 saw the deployment of 12 psychoneurological sanatorium-schools, 3 sanatoriums for pulmonary and bone tuberculosis, 25 health-improvement grounds, and 2 mobile child health protection detachments (Urals and Kazakhstan). V. Ivanov. Maternal homelessness. The instability of marital ties, as a reflection of the search for new forms of family and domestic relations, has given birth in recent years to a special type of homelessness, namely the homeless mother. This concept is, of course, conventional. The category of homeless mother is understood to mean a single mother with an infant, most often abandoned by her husband during pregnancy or shortly after childbirth. For the most part coming from the village (farm laborers, due to casual relationships during seasonal work in industries, or in the city - domestic servants), homeless mothers constitute that social group which formerly gave and now gives the highest percentage of child abandonment. This social phenomenon is also homelessness, but in our daily life and consciousness it is associated with the concept of abandonment.