Trend for having many children: regions shared their experience in family policy

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Corporate family programs, regional payments, benefits for housing and utility services, family contract - representatives of the country's regions shared their methods of family support at the National Achievements Forum at the RUSSIA EXPO.

"Supporting childhood, families, demography - all these are key priorities of the state policy carried out by our President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. At our expert panel we will discuss how these tasks have found application in the regions, we will see what has changed there," said Olga Batalina, Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Protection of the Russian Federation.

Olga Beloglazova, Deputy Governor of the Lipetsk region, spoke about the system of family support in the region.

"We focused on the corporate family program, where we work with business and NGOs, as well as make efforts to take care of childhood and motherhood. The region has adopted a law on business responsibility where there are ranking priorities, one of the important points is to have its own demographic program. We are making it fashionable for our business to support families with many children," Olga Beloglazova noted.

Elmira Zaripova, Minister of Labor, Employment and Social Protection of the region, spoke about the achievements of the Republic of Tatarstan in supporting families. According to her, over the last six years the number of large families in the Republic has doubled - today there are 50200 of them, with about 160 thousand children living in them. Every sixth child in Tatarstan is brought up in a large family.

"When we approached the formulation of our program, we identified points of growth for Tatarstan. A significant share of women in the fertile age of 21-25, about 20%, lives in the countryside. And the countryside is always a community-oriented way of life with many children. At the same time, over the past six years, the age of birth of the first child in the Republic has increased from 27 to 29. We realized that we need to move towards supporting large families, encouraging earlier births of the first child and subsequent children, and health care. We have introduced a number of measures: if a woman living in rural areas gives birth to her first child before the age of 25, she receives a payment of 50 thousand rubles, and if she gives birth to her third child before the age of 29, she receives 100 thousand rubles. Subsidies for medicines in the form of certificates for 10 thousand rubles, one hundred percent compensation for kindergarten fees - all this is aimed at supporting families with many children," said Elmira Zaripova.

Ekaterina Berber, Advisor to the Head of the Department of Labor and Social Protection of Moscow, told about the successes in the issue of supporting families, motherhood and childhood in the capital.

"In Moscow, support measures for large families have been maximized - from free parking to benefits for housing and utility services. The number of families with many children in the city has tripled, we now have more than 200 thousand of them. About 500 thousand families have taken advantage of support measures in the city as a whole. Besides, for five years the system of supporting organizations "My Family Center" has been developing, where families can get any kind of support. This makes it possible to identify problems faced by a particular family at an early stage and help them. Over the last year we have recorded a decrease in the number of children whose parents have been deprived of parental rights," said Ekaterina Berber.

Minister of Labor and Social Protection of the Republic of Mari El Marina Ostrovskaya told about the assistance to families with many children in the region on the basis of the social contract.

"Thanks to the social contract it becomes visible how much our families improve their financial condition. 70% of those using the social contract are families with children. In three years, the number of poor families in the Republic has decreased from 20% to 14%. The income has increased in 88% of families, and 67% of families exceeded the living wage at the end of the social contract," said Marina Ostrovskaya.

Lyudmila Bolatayeva, Minister of Social Development of the Moscow region, presented measures to help families in the Moscow region.

"We have more than 70 thousand children born each year. In addition, many families with children from other regions of the Russian Federation move to our area. We try to develop our own support program for each family. Our vector is targeted assistance to a family in a difficult situation. In the Moscow region there are 110 thousand families with many children, the annual increase is 7 thousand," said Lyudmila Bolataeva.

Chairman of the State Duma Committee of the Federal Assembly of Russia on Labor, Social Policy and Veterans' Affairs Yaroslav Nilov praised the recent innovations in the issue of family support in Russia.

"A lot has been done, but there is still a lot of work ahead. We need to stick to the vector set by the President to strengthen the institution of motherhood, childhood, support for families with many children. We need to take all possible, but not prohibitive measures to stimulate the birth rate - through the creation of the necessary legislative framework, creating conditions for the growth of fertility and through propaganda," said Yaroslav Nilov.

Lilia Ovcharova, Vice-Rector of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, drew attention to the fact that the measures taken to support the birth rate are yielding results.

"Over 10 years, there has been a 9% increase in the share of women who recognized that the introduced measures helped them to have a child, whose birth they had been postponing. In addition, the number of women who said that they would not have been able to have a child without the support measures has increased by 6%," Lilia Ovcharova said.