'Good impulses' Strand Romanian Orphans

'Good impulses' strand Romanian orphans

By Elisabeth Rosenthal International Herald Tribune
TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 2005

BUCHAREST Romania's new law on the "protection and promotion of the rightsof the child" has done little to protect Vasile, a 7-year-old who has lived his whole life in an orphanage in the town of Botosani.

More than two years ago, Becky Hubbell, a pharmaceutical executive from Overland Park, Kansas, submitted the required papers to adopt the wide-eyed, dark-haired boy, whom she and her husband had met during several medical missions to Romania.

But before that process was completed, the government passed its new childwelfare law, which forbids international adoptions, among many other provisions. The measure, known as Law 272, has left hundreds of families inWestern Europe and the United States without children they had counted as theirs. More important, critics say, the sweeping law leaves thousands of abandoned Romanian children stranded indefinitely in institutions or foster care.

"You have a child in your heart and you've made all the arrangements, and it's clear that child wants a family, too," Hubbell said. "But for Vasile, time is passing without the stability of a home. And that's harder and harder to make up for.

"When, in 2002, officials in Brussels demanded that Romania clean up a chaotic and sometimes corrupt child-welfare system as a condition for admission to the European Union, Romanian politicians jumped into action, desperate to be included in the club. Law 272, written in collaboration withEU advisers, aimed to halt decades of mismanagement in just a few years, with edicts that many critics now say are overzealous and impractical.

In response to criticism that orphans were growing up in sterile institutions, the government mandated that no child under the age of 2 could live in one; the new law, it noted, favored reuniting children with biological relatives or placing them in foster care. In response to charges that adoptions by foreigners were so poorly managed that they sometimes resembled child trafficking, the government declared that there would be no further international adoptions.

Experts both in and out of the country applaud the law's central goal: to encourage Romanian families to stay together and to end the long standing practice here of abandoning unwanted children. But many child advocates doubt that this poor country, just 15 years out from a brutal dictatorship, will quickly be able to find good living situations for its huge population of orphaned and abandoned children. Many children currently in orphanages and hospitals, they say, will be stranded.

"There are good impulses behind the law - to provide more assistance to mothers, to keep children out of institutions - and we all felt the system needed more standards," said Gabi Mihaela Comanescu, program director of ProChild, a Bucharest nongovernmental organization.

"But there are problems," Comanescu said. "For example, there are older children who are as adoptable as ever, but there is no one to adopt them now. Also, the law says every abandoned child under 2 should be in foster care, but as far as I know there aren't nearly enough foster homes.

"The unintended result: A number of deserted infants now pass their precious first year in a hospital ward. There are close to 10,000 children abandoned at hospitals each year inRomania, according to a new study by Unicef, and up to 50,000 children in care of the state.

Before Law 272 took effect on Jan. 1 this year, politicians from France, Italy and United States, among others, vigorously lobbied the Romanian government to rethink the ban on international adoptions - or at least to allow cases already in process to proceed. In January, the new Romanian prime minister, Calin Popescu Tariceanu, said that he would "not forget foreign families" who had taken steps to adopt Romanian children.

According to the Romanian Adoptions Office, 467 babies were adopted by foreigners in 2002, although a partial moratorium was already in effect. Before that, several hundred Romanian children were adopted annually by families in Italy, France, Israel and the United States, according to adoptions groups in those countries. Today the number is zero.

Instead, Romanian county child welfare officials are now required to "reintegrate or integrate the children into their biological/extendedfamilies or to place them with a Romanian foster family," said Theodora Bertzi, head of the new Romanian Office of Adoptions.

New families are being trained in foster care to meet the need, she said. Romanian couples (or grandparents living overseas) are being encouraged to adopt unwanted children. Orphanages, euphemistically called "placement centers," can take children over 2 when no home is available.

Florin Catanescu, 28, grew up in the centers after being abandoned at birth by a schizophrenic mother. He carries his past in one small photo album decorated with a child's glittery stickers. He is skeptical about Law 272, at least in the short term.

"I just don't think the resources are sufficient in our country for this new law, and attitudes will not change that quickly," said Catanescu, who is starting a nongovernmental organization to help graduates of the centers integrate into society: find jobs, rent apartments, buy coffee.

"Children will be stuck - there are still so many families who abandon children. "In Romania, the law has recently come under fire because of news reports that large numbers of abandoned infants under 2 now live in Bucharest hospitals. The new law says that abandoned children in this age bracket can be placed with families, but not in orphanages, since research shows that institutional upbringing impedes their development. But there are not enough willing families.

When a Romanian journalist, Adriana Oprea-Popescu, stayed in the hospital with her sick infant this year, she was shocked to find herself rooming with two toddlers who were growing up in hospital beds. One, a healthy 8-month-old, had lived there since the age of 7 days.

The result of that experience was a series of exposés in the newspaperJ urnalul National describing feeding rooms where newborns get bottles from their mothers and abandoned babies are fed with a bottle propped on a cloth.

"What is happening is really tragic," Comanescu said. "The law compares a home with an institution, and concludes a home is better. But a hospital is even worse, since there are no play programs" at a typical hospital.

A new Unicef report, marked "not for distribution" but provided to a reporter, concludes that "children under the age of 2, and especially newborns left without their mother, constitute an emergency segment that requires immediate priority."

Romania's unusual tradition of child abandonment began with a ban on birth control imposed by Nicolae Ceausescu, the former dictator, in 1966, in the aim of increasing the population. Within a year, women began dropping off unwanted children at state orphanages or hospitals. Their logic was that"the government wanted them, so the government should raise them," the UNreport said.

Child abandonment has continued at the same level for 40 years, said Pierre Poupard, head of the Unicef office in Bucharest, even though birth control is widely available in post-Communist Romania. Now, mothers desert babies because they feel they cannot afford to raise them.

Many of the abandoned children continue to have contact with their mothers even if they live in placement centers for years, making it hard to define their family status. Under the old law, if a mother disappeared for more than six months, the child could be put up for adoption. But the new law stipulates that amother's right to her child is indefinite, extending through years of absence.

In order for a child to be put up for adoption, the mother must sign a paper formally ending the relationship, which is impossible in cases like Vasile's when the mother has long since disappeared. Other relatives have to decline the child as well.

At the Sunbeam Complex of Community Service, a placement center 100 kilometers, or 60 miles, from Bucharest, 15 of the 16 children (aged 4 to 9) have had in their lives some contact with their biological families. Only one girl, aged 4, is technically adoptable.

The tidy two-story house, lying amid dusty fields, is far superior to the huge, impersonal orphanages in Communist Romania that made its child welfare system so notorious. On a recent afternoon, young residents busied themselves drawing pictures at low tables and playing with blocks.

But before Law 272, five children left here each year, adopted by foreign families, said Letitia Stefanescu, the home's director. The new law "has many good aspects," Stefanescu said, such as offering preventive counseling and financial assistance to young mothers deemed at risk of abandoning babies. But she acknowledged the downside for the children in her care: "International adoptions gave them a chance for afamily.

"A cute 9-year-old with pigtails, who can only be identified as M.S., said, "I like being here, but I would like more to be with my mom." The girl'smother, who lives nearby, hasn't visited for several years.

Stefanescu has faith that the new system will find solutions: New programs will encourage or force some mothers to pick up abandoned kids; other children will find foster homes. The 4-year-old, she hopes, will be adopted by Romanians, even though they traditionally do not adopt older children.

Becky Hubbell, who spends holidays volunteering here, thinks it's great that the Romanian government is now helping families stay together. But in the meantime, she said, "there are kids like Vasile who have no options but adoption abroad. We already provide support for him. We will be his family, no matter what."

Copyright © 2005 The International Herald Tribune
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