Home for mom.
First floor: administrative premises. Here is the duty station, which registers everyone who comes or leaves the center. The offices of the head of the crisis center, a lawyer and a social worker are also located here. A large room is reserved for a room for joint prayers. It also hosts all holidays, such as birthdays. On the ground floor there is a kitchen, which is used by mothers. There is also a meeting room where interviews are held with potential wards, as well as weekly consultations for each mother who lives in the center.
Second floor: living quarters. Here, mothers with children live in 5 bright and comfortable rooms. Each has everything you need: comfortable beds for mothers and cradles for babies, lockers and changing tables. There is even enough space for games: it happens that a woman with a 3-year-old child gets into the "House for Mom" - for example, if she is pregnant with her second baby. In the corridor next to the rooms there is a corner with a bottle sterilizer and a kettle - so that mothers can quickly prepare formula for the baby even at night.
Third floor: common dining room, an auxiliary kitchen where food can be heated, and an additional living room. This room is used to be called the “isolation room” - here the newly arrived mother lives in quarantine before they receive all the test results in the “House for Mom” and make sure that she is not a carrier of diseases dangerous to other wards and children. Also, mothers who, for example, have a cold, etc., can live in this room.
Basement: recently equipped as a classroom for all women to undergo occupational therapy. Here it is possible to make travel sets of threads - so mothers can earn some money. In addition, the classroom is equipped with several training places for hairdressing and sewing courses. You can understand that this is not a simple class of a technical school by looking at the cradles that stand near the training places: mothers can come to classes directly with their kids. There is a laundry room in the basement where moms do their laundry. Every day, one of the mothers is responsible for the laundry. A separate room in the basement is set aside for receiving and storing humanitarian and clothing aid, which is brought here by caring Muscovites. In the "House for Mom" you are always welcome with baby clothes, cribs and strollers, hygiene products for newborns, diapers and diapers, as well as dry mixes and baby food.
In October, another crisis center for women in Moscow began its work - the "Movement for the Defense of Childhood". This is a charitable organization for mothers who find themselves in a difficult life situation. It is absolutely free and exists on donations.
For 7 years now we have been helping families who, oh, how hard it is. There are all sorts of stories, - says the coordinator of the public organization "Movement for the Protection of Childhood" Sergey Pchelintsev. - Very, very many mothers in our country need help. And not some difficult, but the most banal - to gather children to school, find winter boots for the elder, buy firewood for the stove. There are also more difficult tasks - to help restore a burned-out house or make repairs, because the guardianship authorities are already threatening to take the children away, to pay for the electricity cut off for debts, otherwise the family will freeze. Stock the refrigerator, sit with the children so that the mother can go to restore some documents. Or you need to urgently treat children, go to Moscow for examinations, but there is no one to stay and no money for a hotel. We have long wanted to open a shelter for mothers with children in Moscow. And now, finally, there was such an opportunity.
A small two-room apartment on the first floor of a house in Izmailovsky Proyezd - and the Moscow office of the "Movement" and a shelter at the same time. Office in one room. In the other - a bedroom with folding sofas, a bathroom, a tiny kitchenette in the aisle.
In total, no more than three mothers can fit here, ”says Vera Komarova, a volunteer employee of the Moscow branch. - If suddenly there will be more, then here is another sofa in the office. You can spend the night, and in the morning we will call our colleagues and put them somewhere.
In a couple of weeks of work, the services of the center have already been used by five women with a variety of stories.
One refugee Lyudmila. She came with all her belongings, a 7-year-old daughter and a dog. She has three more children in Donbass. It is clear that they do not have enough money, but simply do not have it. According to the rules, you can stay with us for no more than 5 days. She needed so much - and while our daughter and dog were with us, Lyudmila dangled to the migration center, solving problems with documents. She says she found a good job in Lipetsk and a dorm room. From us they went for the rest of the children, we gathered food for her as much as we could. On the way back, she said, they will all live with us together. Children at least show Moscow, since there is a place to spend the night.
Another woman is Olga Eremenko from the Far East. Her fourth child was born with a rare disease.
They arrived in Moscow to the hospital in the summer, but were delayed to take some tests and wait for the results before flying back home. We not only sheltered them, but also dressed them - they have all the things that are summer, light. They gave a huge bag of children's clothes with them - for other children.
One mother, whose first and last names were asked not to be named, lived only a couple of days.
She called at three in the morning from the hospital, where she ended up after being beaten by her drunken husband. She came to us by taxi all in tattered clothes, with bruises and abrasions. Cried all night. In the morning I went home and, while my husband was away, took some things, passports and my daughter from the kindergarten. The next day her parents came from Voronezh to pick her up. She said that she would not return to Moscow anymore, she would build life from scratch in her small homeland.
Every day, women from all over Russia call the help center. But volunteers are waiting not only for them, but also for people who are ready to give things to needy families.
We have two collection and sorting points in Moscow. We take everything. And the remaining building materials after the repair. And notebooks, backpacks - this stuff is always needed. Bed linen - pillows, blankets, curtains, carpets. Cereals, canned food, baby food, diapers. And, of course, clothes for both children and adults - in a wearable condition. We sort everything and send it to where it is really needed.
Specifically
Where to go
The Movement for the Protection of Childhood has volunteers in almost all regions, information can be clarified on the official
Helping women endure the blows of fate - this is the goal set by the creators of a unique shelter in their own way, which is opening in Moscow. Young mothers with children who find themselves in some kind of crisis will be given not only temporary shelter, but also everything necessary to deal with the problem, find housing, work.
Rented room in an apartment 100 kilometers from Moscow. Temporary shelter. Oksana and her three-month-old son Artem should leave him one of these days - the permanent tenant will return. A young mother with a child has nowhere to go. Relatives live in Kyrgyzstan, Artem's dad left them as soon as he found out about Oksana's pregnancy. Maternity money and child support are barely enough to make ends meet. So, in other people's apartments and rooms, their little family has been living for several months. Or rather, she lived. Recently, leaving the church, Oksana saw an ad. Social assistance to women in difficult life situations. And a phone.
“Somehow, just on a whim, I took and wrote off this phone number, I didn’t know at that moment whether I would call, I wouldn’t call, it was very inconvenient to call and tell the current situation to a stranger,” says Oksana.
Now Oksana is already collecting things. Together with Artem, they move to the Home for Mom, an Orthodox crisis center for families like this one. Here you can live, there is someone to leave the child with, while the mother is looking for a job, draws up documents, tries to establish a normal life again.
A well-groomed room, toys, furniture - everything you need for life. Psychologists, lawyers, social workers work here. The main goal is not so much to give shelter as to help to survive a difficult period. To break the web of problems that has tangled hands and feet and seems insurmountable. According to experts, in Moscow alone, more than a thousand pregnant and young mothers are in a situation of acute crisis due to the lack of support from the father of the child and relatives.
The building was transferred to the Moscow Patriarchy in 2000. Prior to that, it was a hotel. So the idea, one might say, asked for itself: it didn’t even need to be rebuilt. All that was needed was cosmetic repairs and furniture. Therefore, the entire project - from idea to implementation - took only a few months.
The shelter is designed for 10 people in need, but it is not necessary to live here all the time, and many do not need it. Those who have a roof over their heads also turn to the crisis center. One of them is Yulia Belitskaya. Until recently, Julia was a happy wife, preparing things for the birth of her daughter. But the doctors diagnosed the unborn child with a congenital heart disease. Usually such children die in the first hours of life. The husband demanded: the child should not be born.
“I never had the thought of getting rid of the child,” says Yulia. “We gave everything away after all, when we said that it was hopeless, and then I secretly took away the little socks from the cradle, saying that it was her brother.”
Julia, just like Oksana, abandoned by her husband, is going to defend the life of an unborn baby. He is raising money for an operation in Germany - more than 4 million rubles are needed. Some are provided by the Orthodox help service. But this is still very little. Julia is supported by complicity and prayer. However, as they say in the orphanage, neither sermons nor communion will be forced here on anyone.
Maria Studenikina, head of the Home for Mom center at the Synodal Department for Church Charity and Social Service of the Russian Orthodox Church, explains: “Of course, this is an Orthodox shelter, but we will not be forcibly led to faith and worship, it should be the choice of the person himself.”
Families are expected to stay here for an average of three months. Crisis center experts believe that in most cases this time is enough to come to your senses, get back on your feet and start living a normal life again. The term, however, is rather conditional: no one is going to be expelled. As long as there is a need, they will provide medicines, children's things, if necessary, they will help to make repairs in the found housing.
This is the first institution of its kind in Moscow. In total, more than fifty church-public centers for the protection of motherhood are already operating on the territory of Russia.
Crisis centers provide assistance in various forms. One of them is a telephone helpline. The purpose of telephone contact is to listen, understand the problem, support the victims, determine the type of assistance needed and organize, if necessary, a consultation. You can get detailed information about the place and working hours of specialists and other data by calling the helpline. The line of trust has a lot of emotional significance, so all employees should first be trained in the principles of counseling, as well as to study the problem on which the center works (for example, domestic violence, sexual violence, violence against children, etc.).
The second form of work of the crisis center is face-to-face counseling by specialists in a particular field (psychologists, doctors, teachers, lawyers). The third form is group sessions (psychotherapy) and peer support groups.
There is also such a form of assistance as "shelters" - a wide network of special shelters for victims of domestic violence. Here, if an intolerable situation has arisen in the family, a woman can hide with her children. For example, in the United States, the activity of "shelters" is one of the independent specialized programs to help victims of violence. As a rule, these are small cozy buildings far from the city center, the address of which is kept secret. The regime here is free, some women even continue to work during their stay in the "shelter". Everything is built on the principles of self-service; women are provided with free food and medical care. The average occupancy of "shelters" is 30-50 people, and the length of stay in them is from 2 to 5 weeks. One of the main tasks of victims' assistance services is psychological rehabilitation and legal assistance; it explains in detail the rights of women and children, and in cases where divorce is inevitable, practical assistance is provided.
The movement for the creation of municipal and public crisis centers has now unfolded in various regions of the Russian Federation. Crisis centers operate not only in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but also in Astrakhan, Arzamas, Barnaul, Voronezh, Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Langepas (Tyumen region), Murmansk, Nizhny Tagil, Nizhny Novgorod, Novgorod, Petrozavodsk and the Moscow region.
Regional crisis centers with their experience prove the need to create special centers throughout the country, their effectiveness in providing assistance to those in need.
municipal organizations. Women's Crisis Service, Langepas, Tyumen Region
The initiative to create this service belonged to the city administration, on behalf of which the municipal institution "Center for Family Problems" acted. It is financed by the city budget. A few years ago, the city of 35,000 oil workers, where young families who came to work mainly live, was shocked by the brutal crimes committed by husbands against their wives. In one case, a husband hanged his wife, to whom he constantly used mental and physical violence. In another case, a husband shot his wife in front of the children, dismembered her corpse, and forced the children (the eldest was 12 years old) to help hide the remains through pipes and ditches. A young woman threw herself from the roof of the ninth floor of a residential building, not knowing how to stop the beatings and threats in the family.
Information obtained from the internal affairs bodies of the city of Langepas showed that every day three or four women turn to the police with a request to protect them from domestic violence. In addition, social services had sufficient information that there are dysfunctional families in the city, where women with children are often subjected to violence by their husbands, there are families where relationships between husband and wife, children and elderly parents do not develop.
Thanks to the initiative from below and the responsiveness of the mayor, in 1997 a Municipal Crisis Center was established in Langepas. It includes two services - a helpline and a shelter for women who have experienced domestic violence. In the shelter (this is a cozy five-room apartment, the address of which is not disclosed for the safety of the victims of violence and the staff of the shelter), seven people can hide from family adversity at the same time. Women have all the necessary conditions for living here. They are given daily food packages, there is a well-equipped kitchen, where, if desired, you can always cook something yourself.
The maximum stay was increased from seven days to fourteen, as one week is clearly not enough to resolve the conflict. In some cases, the period of stay may be extended. For example, an elderly woman who was abandoned by her children stayed at the Center until she was placed in a nursing home. A woman can stay in the shelter anonymously for a day. If she wants to stay for a longer period, she is obliged to provide information about herself proving her identity and the reason why she cannot stay with the family.
One of the activities of the Crisis Center is the preparation and distribution of brochures "Personal Security of Women and Girls". Especially for lectures in the internal affairs bodies, the staff of the Center compiled a memo for the policeman “What to do if a woman who has experienced violence applied to you”.
The main assistance to women is provided by social workers and psychologists of the Crisis Center. Sometimes, if necessary, health, education and law enforcement officials are involved. A significant shortcoming in the work of the Center, according to its head, Irina Alexandrovna Milanovich, is the lack of a lawyer and the impossibility of providing qualified legal assistance. The next step in improving the activities of the Crisis Center will be the involvement of lawyers and the creation of a specialized free legal consultation.
Here are the statistics of appeals for help to the Langepas Crisis Service for the nine months of 1997. A total of 136 people applied (per 35,000 inhabitants), of which 74% were women and children, 26% were teenagers. (Two times the center was approached by men who received assistance to the best of their ability, but this information was not included in the statistics.) Appeals about physical violence amounted to 24%, sexual violence - 2%, economic violence - 21%, mental violence - 53%. At the same time, 68% of appeals followed immediately after the commission of violence. The rapists were: strangers - in 11% of cases, acquaintances - in 19%, relatives - in 70% of cases. Violent acts were committed continuously for a long time in 76% of cases. The nature of the injuries inflicted: mental trauma - 78%, physical damage - 22%. 14% of women officially applied to the internal affairs bodies. 3% of women brought the case to court (excluding cases of murder and serious bodily harm). Victims were supported by: relatives - 11% of cases, friends, public and state organizations - in 60% of cases. Time spent in the shelter: one day - 41% of applicants, 7 days - 27%, 14 days - 20%, more than 14 days - 12% of applicants.
Without a deep analysis of these statistics, we can immediately say:
- most often violent actions are used in relation to women and children;
- the most common are mental and physical abuse;
- most often, relatives, and not strangers, act as rapists, i.e., violence occurs in the family;
- in the vast majority of cases, violence is not a single act, but a recurring phenomenon;
- women, as a rule, do not turn to the police, but seek support and help from friends (but not relatives) or in special organizations;
- The optimal length of stay in the shelter, as a rule, ranges from 7 to 14 days.
A small but significant example of the activities of the Crisis Center in Langepas provides significant information about the spread of such a phenomenon as domestic violence, and allows, already relying on facts, to confirm the thesis that domestic violence is not a myth, but a reality, and that it is a social a problem that requires immediate response from state and public organizations.
