Way too many children in Romania have been the victims
\nof abandonment! Whether they spend their childhood in orphanages, family-like
\ncare systems or whether they are in the care of an extended family, for all of
\nthem, the word home does not exist, or it exists in a seriously distorted way.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
According to official statistics, as we speak, the
\nparents of almost 76 thousand children work abroad. As of late, the Ombudsman, Renate Weber, has stated the number of such children was much greater, more
\nthan 100 thousand, which is appalling, she said, given that, for various
\nreasons, a great many of those children are not officially registered as such or
\nnobody cares about them.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Of the dozens of abandoned children, nearly 4,000 are
\nin 140 placement centres or thereabouts. Why did they end up being there? Giving
\nus an answer to this question, here is the development manager of an NGO, Hope
\nand Homes for Children, Robert Ion. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Robert Ion: <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In Romania, one in three children lives
\nbelow the poverty limit and it is because of poverty that most of the children
\nend up in placement centres, at the moment. They are the 4th, the 5th,
\nthe 6th child in their family, in most of the cases hailing from
\nrural areas, for whom there is nothing left at home. Children end up in placement
\ncentres for various other reasons! It may very well be because their parents
\nwork abroad. It could be because a child was abandoned in a hospital unit. It
\ncould also happen because a legal entity ruled that the child be removed from
\nan abusive environment. And yet, were we to look at the most common cause of
\nthe children being institutionalised, that is, nonetheless, poverty \u02ba.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Time has told us that the chance for children in
\norphanages to become the adults society expects them to be and, which is more important,
\naccepts, that chance is very slim. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Robert Ion:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u02baWhat
\ncomes in handiest for us to do is to have the earmarked budget so that we can
\nprevent the separation of the child from their family. In all Romanian governments
\nafter the Revolution, no such budget has been earmarked whatsoever. It does
\nexist, for the placement centres to be functional, and becomes operational once the
\nchild is removed from his family, which is unusual. We should have a budget earmarking
\nin order to prevent the separation of the child from the family, so that we can help
\nthe underprivileged parents or the children coming from vulnerable socio-economic milieus
\nto stay with their parents. Once the rift occurs, we’re speaking about a
\ntragedy, for the child, but also for the family, it’s something we have decided to sort out by institutionalising the child, who is in no way to blame, as regards
\nsuch dynamics. The programs preventing the child from being separated from their
\nfamily are, for their vast majority, supported by non-profit organisations,
\nsuch as ours. Longer term, we should also consider, as a country, opting for no
\nlonger allowing for institutionalisation to be recognised as a form of child
\nprotection. We wouldn’t opt for allowing our own children to be included in a placement
\ncentre, but we think that is all right in the case of other children, and that
\nshouldn’t happen. We should have more prevention services, we should have as
\nmany as possible family-type care homes, an as wide as possible network of
\nprofessional maternal trained nurses so that we may help parents keep their
\nchildren at home.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
To that end, \u02baHope and Homes for Children\u02ba, for instance, has
\ntaken action along three directions.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Robert Ion:<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We’ve been doing personalised work,
\nfor each and every child and every separate family, so that we can offer what that child
\nor that family need. In some cases, that translates into medical treatment, in
\nother cases we prevent school dropout from happening, sometimes what we do means providing footwear,
\nclothes, essential goods, which, for various reasons, do not exist in
\nthat family. We’re working on the closing of placement centres (through memoranda
\nsigned by the County Councils and the General Directorate for Child protection)
\nand on replacing them with what we have termed Alternative Care Methods,
\nfamily-type homes, professional maternal assistance. and, to cut a long story
\nshort, we help children who are no longer included in the protection system
\nwhen they turn 18 or 26, respectively, to make their first steps into the self-supportive
\nlife. For such children, we pay rents, for instance, because, even though they
\nare recognised as a vulnerable population and are entitled to having access to
\nsocial housing, in Romania, there are not enough social housing lodgings, while
\nthe youngsters who get out of the placement centres cannot access them, and the
\nalternative for them, as soon as they’ve been released from the centre, is simply
\nroughing it. And later, and with them, we need to find the answer to the
\nquestion Do they need more schooling or what job best suits them? For us, child
\nprotection is of utmost importance so that is the area we get involved in. Everyone
\nelse can get involved, too, they can visit our website, at departedefrica.ro, if
\nthey want to find out more about how exactly they can help the children we
\nsupport, or they can just text-message, hope, at 8864, for a monthly donation
\nof 4 Euros.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Among those who did get involved in that, albeit
\ndifferently, is Oana Dragulinescu. Oana is the founder of a Digital Museum of
\nAbandonment. The headquarters, a virtual one, actually, is the former hostel-hospital
\nfor severely-disabled children in Sighetu Marma\u021biei, in the north. That hostel-hospital
\nis the strongest and most painful icon of abandonment and institutionalisation
\nin communist Romania before 1989. Closed down 20 years ago, the harrowing image of the hostel-hospital
\nin Sighet was preserved in most of the video recordings that
\ncame to be known all over the world immediately after the revolution in
\nRomania. We want the Abandonment Museum to become a healing space of expression
\nfor a community whose collective trauma has never been truly acknowledged and
\ndiscussed publicly. It is the trauma of the hundreds of thousands of children
\nwho were abandoned during the communist years, but also during the country’s
\nrecent history, or at least that is what Oana Dragulinescu says.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Oana Dragulinescu:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Whom should
\nthe healing target? Probably us all, as a nation. I think we should heal ourselves of indifference, as
\nthose institutions, we’re speaking about only one, that which was based in
\nSighet, but there were several dozens of other institutions in that extreme
\nform, that of the hospital-hostels, such institutions were found in the city
\ncentres, people like me and you used to
\nwork there, and yet, in our interviews, it looks like nobody knew that, not
\neven the social assistance employees, they never imagined that something like that,
\nsomething appalling, happened in Sighet. I think it is something we resort to
\nwhenever we see something horrendous, it is simpler for us to look the other
\nway. And that can really be simpler, short-term! Yet longer-term, here is
\nwhat happened when we looked the other way. In Romania, the abandonment rate did
\nnot drop after 1989 and after Decree 770 was repealed, which banned abortion or
\nany form of contraception. And then, we may find it healing, to talk about that
\naspect, I mean, to be able to realise that leaving the country to work abroad
\nfor our children, so they can have a better life, may also be a form of abandonment,
\na much softer one, definitely, and, viewed from such a perspective, talking about that,
\nwe wanted it to be an out-and-out healing undertaking. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Let us not forget: abandonment is the most distressing form
\nof neglecting a child. <\/p>\n
(Translation by Eugen Nasta)<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The distant prospects of having a home of their own, in the case of abandoned children<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":109,"featured_media":143908,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42997],"tags":[43864,33637,35668,42943,43863],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-143907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-today","tag-abandonment","tag-assistance","tag-child","tag-healing","tag-orphanage"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n