Five children were taken from their mother in Kryvyi Rih: a story of indifference that has lasted for years

During the war in Ukraine, thousands of families face loss every day, burying their loved ones. Against this background, the cases when children suffer not because of hostilities, but because of the indifference or negligence of adults in their own homes, look especially painful. At a time when some parents bury their sons and daughters who died in the war, others leave their own children in dirt, hunger and neglect. One such case occurred in Kryvyi Rih, where five children were removed from their families due to unacceptable living conditions.

Five children in the midst of dirt and alcohol: fixed, removed

In Kryvyi Rih, social services together with juvenile prevention workers removed from a family of five children. The youngest child is two years old, the oldest is thirteen. According to neighbors, the mother abused alcohol.

A neighbor named Svitlana went to the apartment where a large family lived, because the door was open, and screaming and crying did not give peace. What she saw impressed even her, although this was not the first time a woman came to this family – she helped with food, children’s things, gave the little one a bed. But that day, everything became irreversible: a two-year-old girl was lying on the bed, just covered in dog feces. No underwear, no blanket, no mother’s attention. Her mother was sleeping drunk in another room at that moment. Empty bottles were on the floor.

Svetlana posted the video on social media. Not for the sake of likes, not out of desperation, but because she wanted to be helped by reacting faster than usual. And help did come — with the police and social services. As a result, the children were removed.

“We kept her in good shape”: how the system accompanies decline

After the removal of the children, the head of the district service for children, Olena Ivanova, reported that this family has been registered since 2022, that is, for almost three years. During this time, according to her, social service specialists visited the woman every week and brought her to administrative responsibility nine times. Ivanova emphasized that the single mother had never been in such a state as on the day the children were abducted. According to the official, she was “kept in good spirits.”

Social services also involved community and charitable organizations. Has it led to better living conditions for children? Obviously not. Because footage of a dirty bed without underwear and dog feces, as well as a drunken mother, speak louder than reports. Words about “preventive work” are too helpless when a child who is not guilty of his birth wakes up every day in darkness, hunger and indifference.

The mother of the children, who for years received remarks, administrative protocols, “tonic” visits from social services, assures: she is going to go to court to return the children. She sees the reason for what happened in the neighbors: they say they are “bad”.

But in this story, something completely different looks bad – the fact that for three years the children’s lives, in fact, remained in the zone of control and observation, and not protection. It took a neighbor’s video on social media to land the children in a hospital and rehabilitation center.

So far, all five children have passed a medical examination. They are healthy, although this hardly means that they are psychologically safe. The youngest girl is in the hospital, the rest is in a social and psychological center. While the legal procedure to deprive the mother of parental rights continues, social services are preparing to find a new family for the children. But no new family can erase from their memory those three years during which adults came every week, fixed the unsanitary conditions and left.

The situation in Kryvyi Rih demonstrates that even under conditions of regular supervision by social services, the living conditions of children can remain critical for a long time. Despite the availability of records, administrative penalties and preventive measures, no real improvement in the situation of children has taken place. The family remained at risk for years, and intervention only came after an outsider documented what he saw. This raises questions about the effectiveness of existing control and support mechanisms. It is surprising that the social services knew about this situation, but as a result, the lives of the children were not improved.