In his welcome remarks, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko noted that dealing with social orphanhood requires a system-wide and balanced approach, with the society and the state working together to resolve this issue.
In her opening remarks, Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova reminded the forum participants that it was the Moscow Region that hosted the first event of this kind back in 2022, which offered a blueprint for future efforts.
It was also in 2022 that the Zero-Four project to preserve families and prevent them from losing custody over their children was launched. Since then, the number of minors placed in various childcare institutions decreased by 35 percent with this indicator reaching 40.9 percent as of November 2025. This approach has been scaled to cover children of all ages as part of the Challenge (Vyzov) project.
In 2024–2025, a National Inspection of the System for the Prevention of Social Orphanhood was carried out as per the President’s instruction. This effort helped reduce the number of children staying in various childcare institutions from 60,061 to 49,131, or by 18.2 percent, between July 2024 and October 2025.
The institution of the commissioners will have to deliver on new tasks moving forward. The President instructed them to reduce the number of children living in childcare institutions down to 30,000 by 2030 by creating supporting infrastructure and introducing family-preserving solutions. An inter-agency working group on helping families with children and preventing social orphanhood will contribute to this effort.
The Children’s Rights Commissioner noted the need to continue developing and improving supporting infrastructure for families with children next year, including by expanding the Children in the Family service network, opening more crisis centres with a focus on enabling children to stay with their families, as well as daycare centres for children with disabilities, and parents’ clubs. The Family Preservation Institute educational platform is expected to be launched in 2026.
Participants in the forum benefited from panel discussions and working sessions on keeping families together, exchanging regional practices and discussing success stories from the Zero-Four and Challenge projects during the two days of the forum.
In addition to this, the forum offered workshops on such topics as the digital transformation of the social sector, as well as seminars on working with families caring for children with disabilities, on resource centres for non-profit organisations and on social integration for teenagers.