The following people have family responsibilities: 1) women (women who are pregnant; women with children under the age of 3; single mothers who (a) raise a child under 14 or (b) a child with a disability - under 18); 2) those adopted a child; 3) parents with disabled children under age 18; 4) people raising minor children without their mother (father); 5) people caring for sick members of their families; 6) single persons; 7) married women and men under 35 years of age or one spouse (young families); 8) parents having many children (including three or more children – large families); 9) parents in difficult life situations.
The author offered to introduce a social and economic passport for each family. The passport should include information on the family’s composition and capital. The family capital was suggested to include: (1) the average monthly total family income; (2) the ownership of the flat, land, and other real estate, indicating their area and market value; (3) the ownership of a vehicle to be registered, including information on its manufacture date.
The thesis contains the opinion that since the national legislation doesn’t distinguish the unemployment benefit amount depending on the number of dependents, an able-bodied person fails to feed his family having lost job.
In order to improve the social protection of families, the pension legislation was proposed to improve in several directions: unification of the provisions of the pension laws, when differences are not objectively justified; expanding the pension coverage due to the loss of a breadwinner by providing for incapacitated dependents, regardless of the degree of kinship with the deceased breadwinner; increased pension level by returning to the model of determining retirement age based on average earnings and record of service.
Young families are considered to be of working and childbearing age, capable of activity and self-development, and therefore need special care of the government. Creating the right conditions for young families’ life would contribute to the birth of healthy and well-off children and the young family’s economic activity.
The author proposed to review the social protection for young families in Ukraine, particularly, to assert that young families have the right to higher social guarantees in general. It means that in case of certain insured accidents, a young family would receive an additional 50% of their social security benefits. In addition, the author stipulated an opinion on the urgency of renewing preferential mortgage lending for young families and creation of a social housing fund for young families.
A single person was determined to have the right of a family member according to the current family law, and within the research, the features of social protection of persons with family responsibilities were proposed to be extended and considered regarding single persons as well.
State social benefits for care regarding single persons were proved to depend on their state of health, and this, according to the author, was not reasonable, since the single person should be entitled to this benefit regardless of disability and the opinion of the medical advisory board on permanent third-party care. A single person has already had the rights to social benefits for care because he or she has no able-bodied relatives to keep her or him according to law. Therefore, social protection for single persons should be reviewed, since care assistance and social services should not depend on an individual’s health. Actually, the status of a single person should give the right to state social benefits for care and such social services as: home care; nursing care; day care; social adaptation; palliative/ hospice care; consultancy; representation of interests; social prevention; mediation, socio-economic (as natural or monetary assistance), transport, and other social services.
The thesis contains considerations that, at the international level, all grounds for differentiation of legal regulation on social protection of persons with family responsibilities are conditionally divided into general ones, equally applied to both men and women, and special ones, applied only to women and give them additional guarantees of equality (such as maternity benefits, confinement grant etc.). With this approach, people with family responsibilities are able to work for income, to do their jobs without being discriminated, and at the same time to fulfill their family and professional responsibilities with the least risk to their and their children’s health and well-being.
