The deinstitutionalized children face a number of problems when they return to the family. Specialists say it is hard to combine all the social services that the children need to integrate into the community swifter. There are difficulties in preventing the institutionalization of children from venerable families. At the same time, 65% of the respondents of a survey carried out by a number of Moldovan NGOs on a social networking site said that all the children with special educational needs must grow up in the family and have access to the general school in the community.

In a news conference at IPN, Liliana Rotaru, head of the Association “Child. Community. Family” Moldova (CCF), said that at the local level, the difficult situation of the children or the families to which they should return from a specialized institution and the lack of alternative family-type services are the main problems faced by the deinstitutionalized children.

“If the children stay in an institution for 6-8 years, the institutionalization affects their self-confidence and social and communication capacities. On the other hand, the families are exposed to crisis situations of any kind. In such situations, it is very hard because one should work initially with the child and the family so as to successfully integrate the child into the family,” stated Liliana Rotaru.

She added that the successful integration of children into the family does not guarantee that the situation will remain as such for ever. “These families are very vulnerable to crisis situations and we think that the social assistants must work more to prevent the separation of the child from the family, to support the family and to detect the problems early. Taking the child out of the family is not a solution,” stated the head of CCF Moldova.

According to Liliana Rotaru, the lack of alternative family-type services makes the children aged between 15 and 16 even more vulnerable when they graduate from residential institutions.

Valentina Chicu, head of the Education Ministry’s Preschool, Primary and Secondary Education Division, said the deinstitutionalization of children has several aspects. Appropriate education and social contexts and educational, social and even psychological assistance must be ensured for the children.

More than 3,900 children lived in national residential institutions on October 1, 2013. Another 1,181 children were deinstitutionalized.