Children with disabilities are still discriminated, despite positive trends, UNICEF

Only several general schools in Moldova admit children with special needs. In the other cases, these children are placed in auxiliary schools, where they spend their entire life or at least until they turn 18, without parents and outside society. The Ministry of Educating, UNICEF Moldova and civil society organizations joined efforts in order to close the auxiliary schools and achieved certain results, UNICEF Deputy Representative to Moldova Sandie Blanchet said in a press club meeting, Info-Prim Neo reports. “The international statistics show that 5% or 40,000 children in Moldova suffer from a certain disability. The disabled children must be everywhere in society, but we cannot see them. They are isolated and discriminated,” stated Sandie Blanchet. She also said that the education system in Moldova is not fully ready to accept the children with special educational needs, but there are signs of improvement. The society became more open. In 2003, only 24% of the people considered that these children should go to general schools, while in 2010 this figure rose to 41%, according to UNICEF studies. Valentin Crudu, the head of the Education Ministry’s Preuniversity Education Division, said that though measures were taken to reduce the number of children with disabilities in auxiliary schools, the situation has not changed much. “The national strategy for reforming the residential childcare system approved in 2007 aimed to halve the number of children in the system. In 2007, there were 10,500 children in the residential system, 4,500 of whom in auxiliary schools and 6,000 in boarding schools. The number now stands at 7,000. We closed 10 auxiliary schools and integrated the children into their biological families,” said Valentin Crudu. The press club meeting “Access to education for children with special needs: advantages of inclusive education” was organized by the Independent Journalism Center and the UNICEF Representative Office in Moldova.