The process of social adaptation in graduates of orphan organizations occurs simultaneously with their socialization: as adolescents become involved in various life situations, they acquire new repertoires of social behavior or employ the ones they already have. Special attention should be paid to the specifics of development in adolescents brought up in socially deprived conditions since they tend to demonstrate asocial motivation, communicative deficits and try to avoid performing social roles. The article focuses on the problematic issues of socialization of orphans and children without parental care. To explore life situations typical for the period of independent living of graduates of orphan organizations, we used a special methodological tool: cases of life scenarios. We carried out the analysis of 452 cases of life scenarios in graduates aged 18—23 years, 262 male and 190 female. The analysis revealed the following problems of socialization and social adaptation of orphans and graduates of organizations for orphans and foster families: insufficient level of knowledge in matters of education, vocational education and employment, low goal-setting skills. We highlight the facts that are prototypical in the description of a life scenario, and these events are at the same time typical for graduates of various forms of foster care and orphan organizations.

The paper describes an empirical study of socio-psychological preparedness of foster parents for taking a child into a family. The motivational and personal, cognitive and activity components that form the structure of socio-psychological readiness for foster parenting are considered. The analysis of the received data allows us to correctly organize the process of support for a foster family.

The problem of assessing the readiness of graduates of various forms of guardianship for independent life is associated with the lack of regulatory regulation of activities for the support of orphans and persons from among them in federal legislation and in the legislation of a number of regions of the Russian Federation. There is neither a unified approach to assessing readiness for independent living, nor a unified terminology base, which significantly complicates the development and improvement of assessment methods. The article presents the results of monitoring programs for the preparation of pupils of organizations for orphans for independent life, conducting an assessment of readiness in the subjects of the Russian Federation and describes the current state of the problem of readiness of graduates of organizations for orphans and graduates of substitute families in different regions, provided by the Department of State Policy in the field of Protection of Children’s Rights of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation. Specialists from 78 regions participated in the study, for which a special questionnaire was developed. The analysis of the obtained data showed that there are several approaches used in the practice of assessing the readiness of graduates by regions: a psychodiagnostic approach, a behavioral and competence approach. In the analysis, we relied on the understanding of the assessment of readiness for independent life through the correlation of the formed life competencies with the requirements that are imposed on graduates and with those indicators that determine the ability to apply the relevant competencies in the right situations. If educational programs, readiness criteria have been developed in organizations for orphans and work is being carried out, then in relation to teenagers who are in substitute families, it is assumed that they will naturally prepare for life in the post-international period in the family or they will undergo career guidance at school. According to the results of monitoring, such a statement of the question is questionable. The prospects of the study are related to the development of a system for assessing the readiness of graduates for independent living, the standard for preparing graduates of organizations for orphans and substitute families to live independently.