The Municipal Division for Children’s Rights Protection must make effort to set up a permanent social emergency service under the Division, the Division’s head Svetlana Chifa said on February 5 at a meeting held to sum up the results achieved in 2007, Info-Prim Neo reports. At the same time, it would be opportune to open an emergency accommodation centre for children in need that will immediately take in the children at risk, in the evening and on the weekend, Svetlana Chifa said, stressing that the Division’s service in 2007 identified 434 children that remained without parental care. About 15,000 children in difficulty were under the Division’s supervision in 2007. Of these, 231 children beg and are vagrant, 117 take drugs, use toxic substances and consume alcohol, and 483 are from disorganised families. The Division also supervised over 5,000 socially vulnerable families that bring up 10,000 children. An accomplishment of 2007 was the reintegration into the family (biological, extended, guardian or adoptive) of 280 children from Chisinau-based state residential institutions and 58 children from centres of nongovernmental and religious NGOs. Svetlana Chifa said that the number of adopted children rises every year. Fifty children were adopted in Chisinau in 2007, as against 40 in 2001, 41 in 2003 and 36 in 2005. The adoption of another 26 children from Chisinau was legalised in different districts. The number of persons that want to adopt children is also increasing. But many of the children in residential institutions cannot be adopted as they do not have the adoption status. There are four family-type children’s homes in Chisinau that raise 28 children. Of the 11 parent assistants from Chisinau, only five work. They take care of eight children. Though the development of such alternative services is a priority of the reform of the childcare residential system, the five Chisinau boarding schools and the Specialised Municipal House for Children are home to over 900 children, 121 of whom were accommodated in 2007. The Division’s specialists say that the legal framework is incomplete as there are no mechanisms for implementing the legislation on adoption, no articles about the responsibility of the parents that go abroad for their children, no funding for the parent assistance service and others. Also, there is no system for monitoring the children and the families in need and for preventing abandonment, the salaries are low and there is a shortage of personnel, etc. Among the Divisions’ goals for 2008 are: to develop the network of social services provided for children and families in difficulty; to reduce the number of children separated from the family; to implement the reform of the residential childcare system by dividing the education services from the social protection services; to promote national adoption; to assess the situation of the children whose parents are working abroad.