The reform of the child care system will expand over six more Moldovan regions in 2008: Leova, Bender, Ciadar-Lunga, Donduseni, Edinet and Soroca. The prospects and results of implementing the reform were presented at a national conference held in Chisinau on Tuesday, April 8, Info-Prim Neo reports. Last year, the reform unfolded in other six raions zones (Balti, Falesti, Floresti, Telenesti, Straseni, Hancesti) through a project supported by UNICEF and the European Union. The authorities plan to reduce the number of children deprived of parental care in 2008, as well as the number of children in orphanages. The Government and its partners are satisfied with the results of the reform started in 2007. Moldova has made much progress in implementing the reform and can be set up as a model for other countries in the area, said Ray Virgilio Torres, UNICEF representative to Moldova. “We made history last year,” said the UNICEF representative, as the number of children taken to orphanages dropped several times in those six zones. According to deputy minister of education Valentin Crudu, 264 children were successfully reintegrated into biological or extended families. Reintegrating 40 children was eased through a Day Center quartered in the boarding school in Carpineni, Hancesti, the first residential institution under reformation in Moldova. They managed to prevent the institutionalization of 469 children. The number of family-type orphanages doubled last year reaching a total of 57 in the country. Social Protection, Family and Child Minister Galina Balmos says 15 Commissions to protect children in need were set up last year, which managed to consider the situation of 1,458 children in “situations of risk”. A network of community social assistants was set up which employed 600 people in 2007 and 396 – in 2008. Their role is to prevent abandoning children, to support families and monitor cases. Although the results gladden, yet the director of the organization “EveryChild Moldova”, Stela Grigoras, regrets the reform unfolds but in some districts, while the children from other districts cannot wait till the authorities learn to reorganize the residential system. The Government adopted a Strategy and an Action Plan in 2007 on the Reform of the child care system from 2007 to 2012, pursuing to decrease the number of children growing up separately from their families till 2012 by 50 %, by integrating them into natural or extended families, instead of keeping them in boarding schools and orphanages. The Government also seeks to reorganize all the residential institutions for children. According to a last evaluation of residential institutions performed by UNICEF and the EU in 2006, 11,500 children grew up in those 67 residential institutions from Moldova. 10,000 of them had one or both parents alive. Most of the children cared for by the state – 5,300 – were lodging in those 19 boarding schools in the country.