UNICEF Moldova, together with the Association “CCF- Moldova – Child, Community, Family” and its British partner “Hope and Homes for Children” (HHC), launched a project to the value of over 425,000 to support the socially underprivileged families with children. Thus, over the next two years there will be set up two social crèches for deinstitutionalized children and will be supported 25 families of professional parent assistants specialized in caring for children younger than three and with disabilities. The Ministry of Labor, Social Protection and Family, the Ministry of Health, UNICEF Moldova and CCF/HHC signed a memorandum to this effect on February 22, IPN reports.
Within the project, 45 children from the Balti-based Temporary Placement and Rehabilitation Center will be reintegrated, while the Center will be assisted to develop social and medical services. CCF Moldova will contribute to improving the legislation concerning intervention to help vulnerable parents and their children and will train professionals at local level. There will also be launched a communication campaign to recruit professional parent assistants for small children and children with disabilities who do not have a family.
In the project launch conference, UNICEF Representatives to Moldova Nune Mangasaryan said that this cooperation is important because, as a result of a number of projects implemented during the last few years, they managed to reduce the number of institutionalized children from 12,000 to about 4,000. “This initiative will contribute both to the prevention of the abandonment of children coming from vulnerable families and to the social reintegration of children who were deprived of a family environment appropriate for harmonious development,” stated Nune Mangasaryan.
CCF-Moldova president Liliana Rotaru said this project will actually last longer than two years because its goal is to change the system. “We will pilot a program of intervention to prevent the abandonment of small children and children with disabilities. We aim to develop two crèches for very small children so that the single mothers in particular can work and do abandon their kids,” said the president of the organization that will implement the project.
Minister of Health Ruxanda Glavan said the institution she represents is ready to support any event designed to support children. “Our role is to intervene with experts for rehabilitating children of an early age. The 45 children who will be deinstitutionalized in Balti will remain in the attention of medical specialists,” she stated.
Minister of Labor Stela Grigoras noted that this project helps the authorities to deliver on their promise to stop the institutionalization of children of an early age. “We need efficient mechanisms to support the vulnerable families that meet difficulties in the process of raising children. We need alternative services because there will always be children who will not be looked after by the own mothers,” she said.
The project is a follow-up to the initiative to increase the number of children from residential institutions who are reintegrated into the family. The initiative forms part of the UNICEF’s priorities to ensure the protection and access of children of an early age to a family environment and of the Government’s priority to prevent the institutionalization of children, in accordance with the child protection strategy for 2014-2020, and envisions adjustment to the European trends.
Currently, there are approximately 3,000 children in residential institutions in Moldova.
