Why Are Babies Brought to Institutions? Mothers" Opinions

Too many times, we judge the parents of the children who end up in institutions. If it is about babies, even worse. It is easy to talk about abandonment, about mothers" carelessness. Very few times do we find out the real triggers leading to child separation from parents. Especially from mothers, in maternity wards, right after birth. The lack of social workers in each maternity section, leads to ignoring major issues of depression, to be found with many mothers, especially those who are poor, or without the support of the family.  The lack of community nurses, who could talk to pregnant women in time, noticing their poverty, loneliness, or vulnerability (symptoms for mothers about to leave their babies)

Desperate mothers are separated from their children due to the incapacity of the social protection system to support them, due to the absence of support levers. If a nurse pulls an alarm signal about a young pregnant woman and her material/psychological/family limitations, many misfortunes would be avoided. Many babies could stay with their mothers. Because post-partum depression, as well as sorting out family problems - could be tackled by the support of those whose role is exactly that of doing this.

I believe that, in most situations, mothers do not want to leave their children to other people. But desperation, poverty and the lack of support make them suppose that everybody, other than themselves, could look after the child they gave birth to in a better way. What greater nightmare for a parent?

We Have Social Services. We Lack Managers

Overall, we have 1,205 social services in the childcare system in Romania. There should be 1,205 managers and, of these, 300 should be medium-level managers, only on services. In other departments and in public social care systems, there are another 3,000 managers nationally. Alltogether, they manage about 60,000 employees, without any specific management training. No wonder that the employees lack motivation, or that priorities are confusing. Without a management structure, without pragmatic strategies, which should be child-focused, the childcare system remains as a machinery to mince childhoods. In spite of all good intentions. Because other things are more important than children, families, or youngsters: be them buildings, accounting systems, politics or inventory lists, these are currently the "priorities" of the childcare system. And many of these priorities can be set straight, many values can be targeted to children and families, if the managers, this resistance structure of the childcare system,  would be prepared and trained to do management, not just to set water on fire, from one day to the other.

Why Do We Need Victims, to Notice the Desastruous Effect of the Embargo on Employing Staff in the Childcare System?

A 12-year old neglected girl got into state care from an abusive family. She does not receive suitable psychological counseling, due to the lack of employees. She gets into a family home, where there is only one carer per shift, looking after 12 children at the same time. There should be at least two employees per shift, but the emergency ordinances issued in 2010 strongly damaged the system: to every 7 employees leaving the system, only 1 can be employed instead. In this context, the 12 year-old girl gets into sex with strangers, including some other youngsters in the family homes.

With close to 14,000 less employees than necessary in the childcare system, most of them at the basis of the pyramid, where you work directly with the children - there is no surprise tragedies start happening. Problem is - these tragedies  will only multiply day by day. And there is no way around it, with such chronic gaps in care.

Standards in childcare are but words on a piece of paper called "law". An empty law, whose lack of application hits directly into children and gives birth to tragedies.

"The HHC Romania programme is the most impressive I have ever seen."

This is what Richard Carter says, an international consultant, an expert in the evaluation of non-governmental organisations, within an external organisational audit he carried out on the HHC Romania programmes for the period 2008 - 2011. The Partnership with ARK - Absolute Return for Kids led to a wide and comprehensive range of social initiatives, which bring an essential contribution to the reform of the childcare system in Romania. Talking about comparisons and the so-called benchmarks, Richard Carter said: "I have never come across such comprehensive and holistic organisational programmes as the HHC Romania ones."

When People Share the Experience of Living in Institutions

I was at the Eurochild conference, focused on the closure of institutions for children. Two persons who lived the experience of institutionalisation spoke about the trauma and the pain suffered in institutions. It is disturbing to hear from their own mouth how it is to grow up without a family, without someone close,in the middle of everybody"s lack of care, just one among many, many other children. Other children who, as well, suffered from the lack of family and love. Honestly, I was troubled to hear about their confessions, now somewhat detached, confessions of those who lived fully a childhood I would not with even to my enemies.