Government pledges to support poor families to prevent children institutionalisation

The residential child care system in Moldova will be reformed until 2012, according to a Strategy approved by the Government on Wednesday, April 4. The Cabinet approved the Plan for the implementation of the Strategy at the same sitting. The reform aims at ensuring and respecting the right of children to grow in family-like environment. In particular, it is planned to reduce by half the number of children who live apart from their families, as well as to reorganise the residential institutions according to a general transformation plan. The Government asserts that the reformation of the residential system does not involve the liquidation of all residential institutions, but their gradual reduction and reorganisation in an attempt to create better conditions for the education and care of children. The strategy includes the evaluation of each child in care, on the basis individual plans for children’s reintegration in families will be worked out. Services for preparing families to receive a child in care will be also provided. Post-integration evaluations will be performed for each child and family. Specialists say that the studies in the field of children protection revealed that the institutional care seriously affects the development of children’s personality and creates multiple problems in the process of their social integration. At the same time, the institutional care is an expensive and inefficient form against the protection systems, based on familial support and community services. According to Minister of Education and Youth Victor Tvircun, as part of the reform, there will be developed tutelage-like social services, family-like institutions, professional parental assistance, or community institutions: centres for day-part care, for temporary placement, maternal centres. The authorities consider that such services will ensure a better house than the orphanages or boarding schools can do, these services also being cheaper than the current expenses, which amount to MDL 150 mln annually. It was also announced that a new form for supporting the underprivileged families will be found, in order to prevent children from being institutionalised. Over 12 thousand children are under the care of 68 residential institutions in Moldova, 85% of them having one parent or both of them.