Opinion
What happened to Romania's orphans?
By: Stephen Maughan
Conditions are certainly better for Romania's orphans since the horrific discoveries following the Revolution, but there remains room for a whole lot more improvement
Posted: 29/07/2009
An orphan's fate in Romania is often based on luck.
Few can forget the horrors of Romania's orphanages of the early 1990s. Following the fall of the Ceausescu regime in December 1989 Romania, although newly liberated, became notorious for the appalling conditions within its state-run orphanages and institutions. The world was shocked by television and newspaper images of half-starved abandoned children chained to their beds. Aid agencies rushed to help and governments condemned what they saw, yet behind the scenes the children continued to suffer. A UNICEF report claimed that in 1990 86,000 children were in institutions, yet curiously by 1994 the numbers had increased to 98,000 children. Perhaps even more surprising is that in 2005 the figure had fallen to just over 80,000. All this despite an increase in international adoptions. (Between 1992-1994 about 10,000 Romanian children were adopted worldwide, according to a report for Toronto Life).
Officially, orphanages in Romania have all been closed; that was one of the conditions of joining the EU in 2007, which in turn followed a European Parliament report in 2001 criticising the country for its treatment of orphans. However, the question remains: what exactly has happened to all those children? The Romanian government claims 12,000 of those orphans now live in foster care, and the orphanages have all been replaced by smaller, modern institutions. Aside from a few celebrities such as JK Rowling and Sarah Brown, the wife of the British prime minister, rallying to the causes of Romanian children, the issue of Romania's orphans is believed - in the wider world at least - to have ended once and for all when Romania joined the EU in 2007. Indeed Baroness Emma Nicholson, MEP for SE England and an international campaigner for children's rights went so far as to declare in 2008 that "Romania has fundamentally reformed its child protection system and has gone from having the worst system in Europe to developing one of the best".
Sadly the reality is far different. Unicef's State of the World's Children 2009 report put Romania's child mortality for under five years of age was 16,000 (compared to just 5,000 for Britain). In October 2008, the General Directorate of Social Welfare and Child Services (DSASOC) issued a report in which Romania's chief social inspector, Maria Muga, stated that 92 per cent of the children in state care did not own any toys, 97 per cent had no cultural and sporting equipment, 77 per cent had no school supplies, and 65 per cent had no toiletry and hygiene supplies.
As for the children now taken into foster care, the recent official DGASPC report said on average there was one social worker for every 100 children, but since joining the EU Romania guaranteed that one social worker should monitor the progress of 25 children in foster care. The social inspector details significant problems within the organisation level of foster care. These factors support the Unicef report's conclusion that "An underestimation of the issues at stake has resulted in too many reforms under pressure, which in turn have led to uncoordinated, contradictory and unfocussed stop-and-go reforms". Hardly one of the best child protection services in Europe!
The sheer number of so many children requiring foster homes creates its own problems. A World Bank report conducted in 2007, which looked at the fate of abandoned children in foster care in Romania, concluded that "It is remarkable how little support these children have received" and mentions problems including foster parents' substance and alcohol abuse, as well as child abuse and neglect. It is hardly surprising this goes unchecked or ignored when Romanian social workers are too few in a badly organised state run system.
Street children is another serious problem facing Romania. Unicef estimated in 2004 that 2,000 street children lived in Bucharest alone, 500 permanently, either working or begging to survive.
Yet life for these Romanian children is brighter than the fate of disabled and Roma children. According to a Harvard Review article in August 2007 "Having attained EU membership, Romania now has less incentive to improve the conditions for disabled children, but has instead turned a blind eye". In fact, Romanian Law 272 on Children's Rights which claims that although orphans under two could not live in state run institutions, disabled orphans are to be sent there from birth. The sad fact is that disabled children are unlikely to find foster families, and will spend their lives 'living' in these institutions, which may not officially be called 'orphanages' yet are "not proper homes for children and further the development of disabilities," according to the Harvard Review. Unicef estimates that there are about 200 of these institutions with up to 30,000 disabled children living there. It is hardly surprising that the report claims only 28 per cent of the 52,000 disabled children living in Romania obtain "some education". Many of these children rely on charity workers to support and visit them within these 'homes'.
The Gypsy community of Romania may well be romanticised by outsiders, but according to Unicef the Roma population, which makes up 7-10 per cent of the Romanian population, has a poverty rate of 77 per cent. Karen Bucur, head of Pathway to Joy, a charity based in Oradea, which also works with the Roma community told me "Their poverty is hard to describe. There is no running water, so with that comes health issues, disease, and the children are uneducated for the most part". Due to the stigma within Romania about the Roma community, vulnerable children rely even more on outside help. Ms Bucur tells me of two little Roma girls, Alexandra and Alina, who the charity found in a dreadful state last winter without clothing and food, and with no support from the social services; the charity was forced to act independently to secure the children's safety, who now thanks to the charity live in a foster family financially supported by Pathway to Joy.
An orphan's fate in Romania is often based on luck. If you are lucky enough to be taken into a good foster family, or receive help through a local charity, working in Romania to support and care for you, you may well be able to lead a normal child's life. However, if you are disabled, or happen to be born in a Roma village, or are just stuck in the state institutions, your physical and mental wellbeing can hang in the balance. Undoubtedly improvements have been made in child welfare issues, but the situation in Romania today still has a long way to go.
Stephen Maughan is a freelance journalist, recently graduated from Britain's NCTJ (National Council for the Training of Journalists). http://spmaughan.snappages.com
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