Our Director of Global Programmes, Pete Garratt, returned to Romania this week to see the challenges faced by families in Romania, and the help that these families are getting from Hope and Homes Romania to avoid intitutionalisation and destitution.
“Picture the scene: you are desperate. Absolutely desperate. Your partner has abandoned you and your three-year-old daughter has been diagnosed with autism. The nursery cannot handle her needs, your employer has kicked you out of your only job, and you cannot find employment that works around your caring responsibilities. Now the landlord of the dingy one-room apartment you try to call home has evicted you because you are late with the rent. You have few friends and no family to help. You are at your wits end and cannot cope. You tell yourself that surely it would be better for your daughter, who you love and treasure, to be cared for by the state. You can’t face the thought of being homeless and on the streets with her.
This is the sliding doors moment that parents are facing on an all too regular basis in Romania – a moment of crisis that is driving them to the brink of separation from their children. This is where our HHC team in Romania so brilliantly step in. Alerted by the local authorities that know our work, by the schools, or sometimes even approached via Facebook, our teams do everything in their power to provide the short-term reassurance that these parents are not on their own, that there are support options out there for them. We’ll help get diagnosis and therapy for their child. We’ll help with food, clothes and a toy or two. We’ll even help with the rent for a brief period, while helping the family claim the benefits they are entitled to, such as the carer’s salary. We’ll ensure they are in a safe and affordable home.
Without this help for a brief period of crisis, the risks of the sliding doors moment risks are a lifetime of trauma for the children and parents as they are separated, with all the developmental damage that the evidence is clear will occur – intellectually, physically, socially.
This week, visiting our work in Romania, I have had the privilege of spending time with many families who have been facing these sliding doors crisis moments, and simply by walking alongside them, showing understanding and compassion, helping them ride through the storm and into the stability they crave, we are seeing hundreds of families kept together every year. Families who would otherwise have ended up confronting the horror of having to say goodbye to their children as they were taken into state care – not because of abuse – but because of a temporary lack of resources. Thank goodness there is a different way that keeps loving, nurturing families together.”
Pete Garratt – Director of Global Programmes
