The Youngsters Leaving the Childcare System Need Support

An impressive 4,261 youngsters are in the childcare system in 2012, aged over 15. Another 2,181 are aged between 12 and 14. In consequence, there are 6.442 youngsters in the old-style childcare system. If we think that the overall number of children in care in old-style institutions is 8,721, then 73,86% of those in institutions are youngsters who, in the next few years, will leave the system, without real support, without the chance of real social integration. These are the data revealed by teh Audit of Social Services for Children in Romania, carried out by HHC/ARK, this year. What do the younsters get when they leave care? Nothing. No support. To real help. Once the system amputates their confidence, once the institutions destroy their childhood, once the abuse of so many kinds hurt their best years - they end up in the streets, in the hands of abusers and offenders.

A support system must be put in place. It can be done. There are models and methodologies. All we need is good will to have these applied. And then, thousands of youngsters will be able to start their lives right.

More and more Children Survive in Misery

The ghettos in outskirts grow bigger and bigger. Only Baia Mare city has seven "poverty bags", according to the jargon of social services. If initially one used to talk about Roma people, I think now we are in the situation in which ethnicity is irrelevant: more and more Romanian ethnics are in the ghettos, without water, electricity, heating. If you get in here, it is like going back in time, in the Medieval Ages. Although, it must have been cleaner those days. The children are black with dirt, you do not know if they are Roma, Romanian, Hungarian or German ethnics. At the end of the day, they are children. And if we draw a line, we talk about people. We spend billions of Euros from the state budget, for all sorts of modernisations, developments, feasability plans and other theories which cost astronomical amounts of money. Meanwhile, this human problem, related to the fundamentals of civilization and care for people - hangs somewhere among detachment, lack of caring, ignorance and prejudice.

I think that the equivalent of 20 kilometres of highway would sort out much of the social problems in Romania. And thousands of children would stop surviving in unbelievable conditions many of us could not even imagine. We watch TV, we witness children"s awful poverty in Africa, South America, India. It would be much simpler to take a stroll to the outskirts, to see all this live.

Mother Killed by Partner, Six Children to Stay with the Grandmother

It is one of the dramas we come across very often. Six children are left on the streets. The mothers is a victim of domestic violence. Lucky there is a grandmother out there. But here as well, one needs to cover running costs with heating, electricity and water for the appartment she lives in, which are in the amount of 9,000 lei. Without this payment, the grandmother  soon ends up on streets herself. So, at the suggestion of the social services, we pay delayed taxes, and the children can stay with their grandmother, in her appartment. Otherwise, all children end up in institutions, or in residential centres. And the state pays around 2.000 lei per month per child. That is about 12,000 lei per month for the six children. And they would stay in the system for years on end, with the state paying exponentially higher amounts of money.

Would it not be easier for everybody to have a legislation which allows childcare services to invest in preventing child separation from families? Firstly, we would avoid the drama suffered by children who end up in institutions,. In addition to avoiding very high expenditure resulting from the lack of proactive action and from the absence of methodology and legislation allowing the prevention of child separation from families.

Anyway, the children stay with their grandmother, in t a family. But the essential problem is still there: until we have a law to allow state authorities spend money to prevent child abandonment, many, many children will get into the childcare system, with dramatic consequences on their childhood and also on the state budget.

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Eight Lei Per Day for the Food of Children in Institutions

For the first time, I hear the Minister of Labour, Family and Social Protection, through the voice of Ms Mariana Cimpeanu, saying how outrageously small the food allowance is for the children in state care: it varies between 8 and 15 lei per day. I am surprised to hear this from a Minister. I got used to seeing them far from the concrete examples of every-day life. It has been a very pleasant surprise and I hope Ms Mariana Cimpeanu"s interest for the realities in the system will continue. How can one  feed a child on 8 lei per day? How can one feed a 10 year-old on 12 lei per day? How ridiculous can these amounts be, and how artificial the budgets of the Social Services, given they are considered to be very big budgets, but over 70% of these budgets are just transferred through the social services accounts, as they are legal social allowances, neither social work interventions, nor sums spent in the benefit of the childcare system?

I hope this false example of the big budgets in social childcare services would come to an end, when, actually, the money goes to general social allowances. It is only 20% of these budgets that are actually spent for the children in the childcare system.

And there is no family protection. Because the methodology to prevent child separation from families has not been implemented yet.

I wish the Minister Mariana Cimpeanu continues to be interested in the welfare of children in institutions, and to actually increase the food allowance. Because there are many other scandalous examples in the system, one of them being the lack of 10,000 employees. In the next few days, I am to present these examples, one by one. They can be corrected, with the action of those who have the power to do so.

Zau de Campie Institution in Mures is Closed!

One more to go! Zau de Campie Institution in Mures county is now closed. The institution had a capacity of 60 children. The work took two years and involved social, psychological and organisational capacity operations. The project team (Mures Social Services staff and HHC staff) agreed upon a design of services which includes 2 small family homes for 24 children, the others being supported to start independent lives or being reunited with their families.

We worked with the local authorities, to stop institutionalisation and keep children together with their families. Other 41 children and youngsters benefited from our direct support in Mures County and were prevented from entering institutions.  The local and county authorities benefited from technical assistance, to increase their capacity to implement efficient prevention programmes.

Two Family Type Homes were built, on the model of social parent families, supported by an educator. 44 children are happier, closer to a family. And Mures county is closer to its reform of social services.

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