Government to approve Strategy on Residential Child Care

The Government is to approve this year the National Strategy and the Action Plan on the reform of the Residential Child Care system for 2007-2012. The evaluation of the 68 residential institutions has already started. According to recent data, these institutions shelter 10,350 children. The reform aims at reducing the number of children in boarding schools or orphanages who grow and develop outside a family, by reintegrating them into their natural or extended families, as well as by preventing the institutionalisation of children. Statistics show that about 85% of the children in residential institutions have one or both parents alive. The Specialised authorities plan to create new community services for the protection of children and underprivilleged families: counselling, workplaces, money, food, clothes or another kind of support, depending on the necessities of each family. Also, the family-type social integration services are planned to be developed: guardianship, family type orphanages; community-type professional parental care: day centres, maternal centres etc. It is also planned to transform residential institutions into community centres. Residential institutions will be kept in several settlements, but they will take care of a small number of children and will have better services. The boarding schools or orphanages which turned out to be inefficient will be closed. Studies found that a child educated in a residential institution has a low self-esteem, has difficulties in choosing a carrer and is inclined to commit offences. The graduates from boarding schools are more vulnerable to the trafficking in human beings than the teenagers that are raised in a family. The reform is implemented by the Government with the support of UNICEF and the European Union (TACIS) within the frameworks of the project “Development of integrated social services for vulnerable families and children at risk”.