Care lessons from Russia with love

As part of a BBC Scotland Investigation: Care at What Cost? Fiona Walker looks at what Scotland can learn from a fostering village in Russia.

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It's like walking into an illustration in a children's book with Hansel and Gretel homes and children helping to stack the logs.

Kitezh fostering village looks at long-term solutions for children

Kitezh is a fostering village in rural Russia, looking after children in care.

It relies on the expertise of a consultant based in Scotland, but it's now more successful than the statistics suggest we are here.

Russia may seem like an unlikely place to discover such a success story.

The country's statistics on their children in care are pretty bleak, but not at Kitezh.

In Scotland children who have been in care are more likely than other young people to end up homeless, jobless or in prison.

About half of those who leave care have no Standard Grades.

In Kitezh, nearly all the of the 69 young people who have been to Kitezh over 15 years have gone on to further education.

None has ever been homeless, addicted to drugs or in prison.

Kitezh's consultant in Scotland, David Dean, believes we can learn from the Russian experience. So what are their secrets?

Children only come to Kitezh if they are suited to the environment.

This means they are less likely to fail. They are still young when they arrive so there's time to work on their psychological issues.

However, challenging their behaviour, the community at Kitezh copes with it.

In Scotland a child can be moved from one children's home or foster family to another.

This may be because the carers can't cope with their behaviour or because temporary solutions are found because of a lack of longer-term spaces.

Each time a child needs to be moved, they can feel rejected, potentially creating adverse behaviour.

You can't put their needs on hold for three or four or five years Judy Furnivall Scottish Institute for Residential Child Care

Taking a child away from their family home is, perhaps naturally, considered a last resort in Scotland.

But this can mean a child is in crisis before it's given the chance of stability or proper education.

Judy Furnivall, from the Scottish Institute for Residential Child Care at Strathclyde University, said we should be looking at removing a child from potential risk earlier, if necessary.

She said: "Time doesn't stop for children.

"You can't put their needs on hold for three or four or five years while we decide whether their parents are able to look after them.

"If they really are not able to then we need to make that decision more quickly and decisively than we do currently because actually parental rights are about the right to provide properly for your child, they're not about ownership."

In Kitezh, the children are loved and claimed by the whole community.

The foster carers and teachers live together in a community to provide constant support to each other.

Because of historic cases of child abuse in children's homes, Judy Furnivall says there are now regulations controlling how we interact with children in care.

She says it's pretty bleak that a child can grow up in a residential schools and never be told they are loved.

In Kitezh, psychologists are on hand 24 hours a day so any issues are dealt with immediately.

During our investigation we discovered children in Scotland waiting for up to nine months to see a mental health team.

David Dean said this was crucial to Kitezh's success.

It means psychological issues aren't left to become more ingrained and more difficult to deal with.

He said: "It's the immediacy of the support and assistance at Kitezh that makes it successful.

"You're not waiting for an appointment - we're talking about people who grow, live, work together.

"That makes the strength of the support that is around the foster parent and by extension around the children far stronger."

Kitezh is unusual with some unconventional methods but David Dean believes we can learn from aspects of their success.

What now for Scotland?

There are plans in Scotland for an Early Years Strategy, focusing on early intervention.

Minister for Children and Early Years Adam Ingram has said he wants to put measures in place "almost from pregnancy" to make sure families can cope.

He has also made it clear that the resources for earlier intervention must come from existing funding.

Care at What Cost? will be broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland at 0900 GMT on Friday.