The first Mother and Child social dormitory has opened in Chisinau, Info-Prim Neo reports. Its residents will be nursing mothers or women in advanced pregnancy thought to be at risk of abandoning their children. The social dormitory is a service developed by EveryChild Moldova as part of the project “Preventing Child Abandonment at Birth”, implemented in partnership with the Institute for Scientific Research in Mother and Child Health Care and the Municipal Department for protection of children’s rights. Irina Spivacenco, the coordinator of the project, explained that the social dormitory is a community-based residential service for four mother-and-child couples, which will share an apartment in a common block for a period of six months, during which specialists will be looking for a solution to reintegrate them into their biological or extended families. Irina Spivacenco says that the novelty of this service resides in the fact that the fresh parents will be able to raise their newborn children in a very family-like environment. The apartment bought from the funds donated by the UK-based Andreas David Foundation has three bedrooms, one common room for leisure activities, a kitchen and a bathroom, all furnished. The mothers will take their children to the medical centre, will go shopping and will learn how to plan their family expenses, receiving a monthly allowance of about 2,000 lei from EveryChild. At the same time, the mothers will benefit from social, psychological and legal assistance, the cited source says. The head of the municipal department for protection of children’s rights, Svetlana Chifa, expressed hope that in the future the municipality will find the possibility of adopting the model of the social dormitory and of expanding this service. Svetlana Chifa mentioned that the number of children abandoned at birth has reduced from 130 in 2004 to 57 in 2007. The municipal official stated that this reduction is due to an intense collaboration of the department with the civil society, the work of the social assistants with mothers in each separate case and the opening of maternal assistance centres. Part of the same EveryChild project, an abandonment prevention service at the Mother and Child Centre, Moldova’s largest maternity, helped last year 80 fresh mothers to abandon the idea of leaving their children behind. Psychologist Maria Petrova says that the women at risk of abandoning their newborn babies are for the most part very young and inexperienced, usually from impoverished families, students or jobless, abandoned by partners or rejected by family. Sometimes fresh mothers are pushed into giving their children away because of community pressure, while some women choose a carefree life instead. Even very young girls can become good mothers if they have a shoulder to lean on and a good piece of advice, says Maria Petrova, mentioning that last year five girls younger than 14 years gave birth at the Mother and Child Centre. According to statistics, about 100 new-borns are abandoned in Chisinau each year, half of whom at the Mother and Child Centre.