The Family Code regulates the new methods of protecting the children that remained without parental care, as the relevant modifications entered force on Tuesday, being published in Moldova's Official Gazette, Info-Prim Neo reports. The amendments were mainly introduced to chapter 17 of the Family Code – “Detection and Placement of Children that Remained without Parental Care”, which has been modified and is named “Detection, Supervision and Forms of Protecting the Children that Remained Without Parental Care”. The introduction of amendments was determined by the situation of the children that remained without parental care, by the launch of the reform of the residential childcare system and by the necessity of quicker adjusting the secondary legislation in the area. Given the large number of children placed in state residential institutions (about 12,000), the authorities began to implement new services for preventing the separation of children from parents (day services) and protection forms that are alternative to boarding schools (professional parental assistance, non-state temporary placement centers etc.). But these forms were not regulated by the Family Code. The amendments guarantee the right to the protection of child not only against abuse, but also against corporal punishment. The definition of the child that remained without parental care is supplemented with the word “abandon” in order to better define this frequently met category of children which was not stipulated in the Family Code. The new stipulations lay emphasis on the necessity of organizing services for preventing the children and family from risks that can lead to the separation of the children from parents and for keeping them under observation. Stress is also laid on setting out the family-type protection forms or forms similar to these. The present legislation puts empathies on the placement of the children in state residential institutions. The changes introduce new forms of protection, but allow placing the children in both private and state childcare institutions. The stipulations of the Family Code are adjusted to the minimum international standards on quality that allow placing only seven and not more children in family-type children’s homes. At the same time, the amendments equalized the marriage age of men and women to 18.