Hope and Homes for Children began working with local authorities and national government in Romania in 1998. Since then, we’ve made remarkable progress in transforming the care system and making the world a better place for many thousands of children to grow up in. Our Chief Executive Mark Waddington writes with an update on our work in the country:
At one point, over 100,000 children were confined in Romania’s appalling orphanage system. Today that number is less than 1,000.
Prevention services have been rolled out across the country, focusing support on families and building their resilience and capabilities to address problems which might otherwise lead to children being taken into care.
Consequently, fewer children are being separated from their families, which in most cases means better well-being, educational and health outcomes for them. And nearly all the children who had been incarcerated in orphanages have either been transitioned back to their own families, or into kinship care with extended family members, or provided with foster care arrangements or community-based care services. No other country has achieved this at such scale.
Services that help communities
This week, we had the pleasure of celebrating the opening of another community-based service, in the city of Iasi in the northeast of Romania.
It is a transition service providing supported accommodation for older children, who’ll each have their own apartments with kitchens and bathrooms. This provides them with both privacy and independence, while staff support them to safely transition from childhood and dependency, into productive and fulfilling adulthood.
Our colleagues at the local Child Protection Department (CPD) have been close and important partners in setting up this new service, which is just one of many we have helped them with. This is how we achieve scale with our impact.
It is always the responsibility of government and local authorities to ensure that families and children who need help receive it. Our role is to help them develop those services and ensure they are delivered properly.
Iasi has the largest remaining number of orphanages of any single Child Protection authority in Romania. There are seven more orphanages in Iasi we need to close, and we are supporting the CPD to complete these closures within the next four years.
Once we’ve succeeded, it will likely mark the full elimination of institutional care of children in Romania. That will be a moment to truly celebrate.
Reaching families at risk
Our concern is always for the most marginalised children and communities though, and we are still working very hard with local authorities to include those facing stigma and social exclusion. So this week we also visited a Roma community that is suffering discrimination while struggling to address some of its own cultural challenges.
Across Romania, infant mortality rates are at a relatively low 6 children in every 1,000. But in this particular community recent infant mortality peaked at 9 babies out of every 30, or 300 in every 1,000 – a catastrophic mortality rate.This inevitably places children in this community at a very high risk of being taken into care.
The Hope and Homes for Children team has been supporting our local partner organisation, Pirita Children’s Association, to provide support to the community and local authorities. As a result of our combined efforts, there has not been a single baby death in the last two years.
There are still around 600,000 children in Romania living in this kind of community. So we’re working with the Romanian government to find scalable solutions and develop services that will support more families to overcome the challenges they face.
An enduring impact
Our Hope and Homes for Children team in Romania are small in number, just 50 people. And yet their impact continues to be enormous. They are all Romanians who are dedicated to making Romania a country in which all children can flourish and enjoy the love and protection of a family, as well as the support of their community.
And they are succeeding.
They really are.