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Incredible Scandal Coming Soon - Newly Built Children Foster Homes Will Be Closed
The Children Foster Care House of Šakiai will be closed,
as the Ministry of Social Security and Labour has decided.
01/11/2017
By the Lutheran Church initiative two years ago the children foster home was built in the centre of Šakiai. More than half a million euro was received from the European Union. Virginijus Kelertas, a Lutheran priest of Šakiai district, says that he was shocked after receiving a letter from the Ministry of Social Security and Labour stating that a newly built children foster home should be closed. According to their opinion the conditions for children are not good enough, although the same Ministry has approved such a project before building a new children foster house. The same situation is in the Vilkaviškis, small town nearby. Here, the Ministry initiates closing of the modern children foster home built two and a half years ago.
Efforts to remind the home
The above mentioned homes were built in accordance with the government's vision that children should live in families, have separate rooms and kitchens, so that the environment would remind home environment as much as possible.
At children foster house which is in the very centre of Šakiai eight children live in one housing. In total - 52. The children foster homes are located on a plot of three hectares. However, the Ministry has decided that the concentration of children here is too high.
Minister of Social Security and Labour, Linas Kukuraitis, is convinced that it is not good for the children to grow in a fenced territory, with a private yard and own playgrounds. Now the State has decided to make efforts to house the children in real families and create a possibility for them to live the same way as with parents – in a house or in apartments. The founder of Šakiai children foster house cannot understand such a changeable opinion of the Ministry.
Lutherans of Šakiai have close relations and cooperate with the Germans. So when building foster houses they looked for the examples. They took the example as for German children such living conditions are appropriate, but it turned out that for Lithuanian children they are too poor. In the Šakiai district alone 700 children grow in homes that do not have water, use an outdoor toilet. It is quite a problem. The closure of a newly built children foster house is a major headache for Šakiai Municipality as well. Officials of the Municipality have to come up with a solution how to help children. Most likely, they will have to spend a lot of money - from the newly built children foster house they will have to move the children to the rented apartments or to buy different housing. By the 2020, as the Government has set, all children will be adopted or have patronage, but the mayor of Šakiai can hardly believe it.
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