After 14 years in Germany, return to Lithuania dashed plans

Jūratė Kasperavičienė returned to her hometown of Klaipėda, Lithuania, with her daughter after 14 years living in Germany, expecting a welcoming environment for returning Lithuanians. Instead, she found herself entangled in bureaucratic hurdles that have stalled her family's integration.

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Publicly declared that open and modern Klaipėda awaits returning compatriots, and in the face of declining birth rates, children are welcomed with great joy, yet my family and I feel trapped in the snares of bureaucracy, where issues are resolved in a planned, mass, inflexible manner, without considering the specific situation and those in it.

"Publicly declared that open and modern Klaipėda awaits returning compatriots, and in the face of declining birth rates, children are welcomed with great joy, yet my family and I feel trapped in the snares of bureaucracy, where issues are resolved in a planned, mass, inflexible manner, without considering the specific situation and those in it," Kasperavičienė wrote in an email to VE.lt.

Her primary goal was to enroll her five-year-old daughter in kindergarten to facilitate her adaptation and allow Kasperavičienė to begin her job search. However, securing a spot has proven impossible during the summer. She was informed by the Klaipėda municipal administration that her daughter could only start in September, with no temporary solutions offered.

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What this means for me and our family: another two months of uncertainty, no real opportunity to start looking for work, living off savings, constantly trying to explain to my daughter why she still cannot attend kindergarten, which she watches children playing behind the fence every day.

"What this means for me and our family: another two months of uncertainty, no real opportunity to start looking for work, living off savings, constantly trying to explain to my daughter why she still cannot attend kindergarten, which she watches children playing behind the fence every day," she explained. The lack of a kindergarten spot prevents her from making concrete job offers to potential employers.

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Applications for children's admission to institutions are filled out electronically in the system by one of the parents, who has been registered in Klaipėda city with the child for at least 1 month.

Vida Bubliauskienė, head of the Klaipėda Municipal Education Department, clarified that admissions require parents to have been registered residents in Klaipėda for at least one month with their child. Kasperavičienė stated she registered on June 18, but Bubliauskienė noted that data from the population registry, which feeds into the kindergarten system, is updated only once a month, meaning Kasperavičienė's daughter's information would not appear until July 10. Furthermore, the kindergarten Kasperavičienė preferred is not operational during the summer.

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Children's registration data for preschool institutions is linked to the population registry. We do not see the child's data in it, as last month's data is updated only once a month by the 10th day of the current month – if the child's place of residence was declared in June, then the data in the children's registration system will be updated on July 10th.