Foster Care Reform and Social Partnership in Nizhny Novgorod Region

Abstract


 Jouko Nikula – PhD, Senior Researcher, Finnish Centre for Russian and Eastern European Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland. Email: jounikul@gmail.com
 Nina Ivashinenko – Doktor Nauk in Economics, Professor, Head of Economic Sociology Department, Lobachevsky State University of N. Novgorod, Head of UNN-ISESP RAS Laboratory. Russian Federation. Email: nni@fsn.unn.ru
 
 This article discusses on-going foster care reform in Russia and analyses possibilities for the evolution of partnerships between stakeholders. The role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the realisation of programmes related to child welfare reform is considered, revealing that social partnership is a form of collaborative action. In other words, drawing on the work of Sandra Waddock, social partnership involves interactions performed by various actors to achieve common goals. The main characteristics of social partnerships are that they are specialised, voluntary and collaborative, and their main goal is to try to solve a common problem. However, not all cooperation between public authorities, NGOs and business is a partnership; in fact a successful partnership is characterised by a variety of features. These include mutual trust, complementary strengths, reciprocal accountability, joint decision-making, clearly articulated goals, equitable distribution of costs and benefits, performance indicators, as well as mechanisms to measure and monitor performance and a clear delineation of responsibilities. The role of non-state actors is increasing in welfare and other social services due to adverse demographic trends and the diminishing economic base available to the state for delivering social services. The state’s efforts to dismantle the former state-centred system of welfare has also resulted in the outsourcing of welfare responsibilities and services in child welfare to non-state actors. Alongside their growing role, many new questions have been raised about the quality of the NGOs’ activities and their skills. Therefore, the expansion of NGOs’ social functions potentially generates both opportunities and risks in the transformation of child welfare. Even if there are some green shoots of partnership between the public authorities and NGOs in this field, their relationship is not reciprocal. We argue that Russian NGOs need to improve their social status and the quality of their work to allow them to have their own voice when negotiating their relationship with different state actors.

Ngos’ And Local Business’ Collaboration For Socio-Economic Development Of Russian Regions

“…The role of the third sector, NGOs due to the activity in the direction of the provision of socially useful services could be very significant in the field. There are many terms, which could be used to define organisations of the third sector: NGOs, NPOs, GONGOs, SONGOs, grassroots organisations, grassroots social service organizations, civic organisations (Kay, 2000;Hemment, 2012;Banks & David, 2012;Fisher, 2013;Nikula & Ivashinenko, 2017), depending of the goals of the research. In this article, the term 'NGOs' is employed to highlight the fact that these organizations were created by individuals or groups of people with no connections to government bodies, who established their organizations to meet their common needs; NGOs do not aim to be a profit organisations.…”

The Role Of Ngos In Local Development: Latvian And Russian Cases

“…These local activities can be seen as responses to the failure of markets and national government policies to meet the local requirement (OECD, 2001) or as the way for development local self-confidence and relative independence (Nikula, Granberg, & Kopoteva, 2015). Some of the scholars highlighted the role of local development in contribution to the goal of strengthening local social partnership and participation (OECD, 1990;Nikula & Ivashinenko, 2017).…”

Socially Oriented NGOs and Local Communities in a Russian Region: Ways to Build Up Their Relationship

“…In Nizhniy Novgorod Oblast at the beginning of 2016, there were 250 such organizations; 14 percent of them worked with families and social orphans (children who have biological parents but are left without parental care for some reason, for example, because their parents are terminated in their parental rights) and were included in the register maintained by the Ministry of Regional and Municipal Policy. These kinds of NGO activities are more developed in Nizhniy Novgorod than other sectors (Nikula and Ivashinenko 2017). Our aim is to investigate how NGOs make connections and develop their relationships with families who potentially need their assistance.…”