A Child Again

I would want to be a child again. To imagine the world I live in as a safe place. To trust the people around, to find happiness in the smiles of parents who are no more. Anytime, without exception. To know that any problem sorts itself out. To wait by the fence, playing, for my mother to come back from work, on an autumn afternoon. To play with friends, in the school courtyard, and to come back home when it gets dark. Then, to drink milk from the bottle and to fall asleep, with my parents" voice somewhere, in the background, in the other room. When we were children, the world is magical and the fabulous rests in an invisible move of the hand, when we imagined reality with fairy tales characters as concrete as ever possible. With our parents" love. With the safety of being loved and that of meaning something really special for your family.

But I am no more. Neither me, nor my friends, colleagues, or those I am in contact with. And we infect from each other, with coldness, indifference, hostility. We take things much too seriously, so seriously that we forget to enjoy we are healthy, we are well and that some of us have children of our own, waiting long, endless hours when we do arrive in the evening at home, or even days on end, when we are away. And everything happens quickly, in a whirlpool, and we can hardly stop, to notice those we live with in a present transforming much too quickly into past. We talk in a hurry, we hardly look at each others, we are absent even when, phisically, we are present. We always think of something else, we have priorities we forget about a week after delivering them, many times with sacrifice and pain for those who really depend on us and for whom we really matter: wives, husbands, children, family, close friends.

Why do we remember suddenly the close ones, when we have the scary spectrum of death, after ignoring them so far? Is it because suddenly the essential things are thos we take for granted, around us?

Priorities and values are bizarre things. And much too seldom in the right order.

The Partnership Agreement for Romania is in its Final Drafting Stage

Too many times have I seen and heard how money allocated through structural funding goes the wrong ways and are not absorbed, or absorbed on areas not at all strategic. I would want the new vision of funding allocation to be based on a whole new architecture, not only because it is the European Commission imposing this, but because this is the approach of those most suitable to sign off documents of strategic relevance, such as the Partnerhip Agreement. On the basis of this document, the operational plans are to be drafted on each segment of intervention individually. Now is the time to expose those challenges what should not repeat in the 2014 - 2020 multi-annual funding frame. Now is the time to act for the inclusion among priorities of those domains and portfolios of projects which can lead to systemic  transformation and to a new vision, focused around real people, not abstract paragraphs, or precious talk. We brought suggestions to be included into this strategic document, which would ensure that real, hard priorities are the essence of it, instead of superfluous ones.

Once we made an analysis of the Partnership Agreement, we sent a series of observations and recommendations, done together with relevant NGOs in our country, and we expressed our availability for direct meetings with representatives of the Ministry of the European Funding, to offer details on the proposals we made.

It is for the first time that organisations in such diverse areas unite their forces for such a common purpose. I think this is a very fruitful approach and we should maintain it, to increase the credibility and the weight of our messages.

We finalise the regional sessions dedicate to the allocation of structural funds and to the child rights national strategy

In Timisoara, with Adina Codres and Izabella Popa, representatives of the Ministry of Labour, we are in a conversation with the counties in the West region: Timiș, Caraș-Severin, Hunedoara and Arad. We tackle two subjects: the priorities of allocating structural funding for the period 2014 - 2020, and the national strategy on child rights and protection. The areas of discussion are the prevention of child separation from families, the relationship between local and county authorities, the law of the state budget, and the way in which it should be changed to allow the intervention in preventing child separation from families and youngsters leaving care.

Until tomorrow, the working group has the task of bringing ideas, proposals, and experience, relevant for a rigorous action plan, with targeted effects on children and families.

Because the funds should get where they are most needed: in the most vulnerable families and children in danger.

The Transition from Institutions to Family and Community Services

The International Seminar on the Transition from Institutions to Family and Community Services takes place today in Bucharest.  The event is held by the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of European Funds.  UNICEF, The European Expert Group on De-Institutionalisation and we, HHC Romania, are co-organisers. The Ministry of Regional Development and Public Administration is involved and it participates actively, which denotes its support and interest.

We estimate that a financial allocation of up to Euro 200 million would lead to the eradication of child institutionalisation in our country and to the completion of the reform, by the development of a system of services based on the concept of family and community.

The 2014 - 2020 structural funds for Romania can lead to the completion of the DI process in our country, by the development of a family-like network of social residential services. Preventing child separation from families is given the relevance it needs and the allocation of funds for the creation of social housing and concrete material support granted to parents of children in extreme vulnerable circumstances - can turn into reality in the next European budget frame for our country.

The support of youngsters leaving care is granted a special perception, by the development of social housing. Annually, close to 5,000 youngsters leave the care system, without any form of support. In most situations, they end up in the streets, under the clear blue sky, or rain, or snow. Now, public authorities and the civil society will be able to access funds for practical, concrete results, in the most chronic areas of the social protection system.

Through such events, we learn from the good and from the bad examples of the current structural funding and we get to use in the best way possible the funding to be allocated starting next year, so that we eradicate institutionalisation as a form of protection for children in our country.

Zoli Toth played last night for HHC, in the Enescu Festival Square

What HHC Romania does for the most vulnerable children and families somehow lacks a spectacular touch. Who enjoys poverty, disease, pain, or failure? This is what we work with 90% of the time. This, prior to reaching the stage of healing, the wealth brought by affection shared with you family, or the success of something apparently so simple, as family life. And not even then, is this sufficiently spectacular. Because the normality of a typical childhood imposes a somewhat boring decency. And just as awful and deep the wounds given by a childhood lived without the love of a family are, just as invisible and silent they are, as well. Like a cancer, destroying you in silence, with a quietness lacking any grain of sensationalism. That is why, what Zoli Toth the musician did last night with the Silvestri Orchestra, is essential: through the resonance of the musical instruments, he brings the missing link of our message to the public, conferring a spectacular touch to an assembly of actions related to parents and their children. And in this way, he offers more and more people the chance to do something. Something to prove that they care.

The way Zoli Toth cares. And caring is never usual. Maybe it should be, yet it is not. It is an exceptional gesture. And I wish I lived in a world which talks about good deeds at least as much as it does about bad ones.