Abandonments at the National Level in Romania - Part 7

Reintegration Just for the sake of integration

by Paula Anastasia Tudor

July 6, 2005

Jurnalul National

Law Nr. 242 from the year 2004, made by EU experts and impossible to be modified in its absolute perfection, strongly militates for the reintegration of the child in his birth family. In Constanta county among all the abandoned children, there were only 5 reintegrations. Some of those, after a little time, were re-abandoned in the same hospital from which they had departed.

As of June 21, 2005, in the Constanta county there were 45 abandoned children or 53 depending on the source. For them, vaccinations which are obligatory and supposed to be free, are rarely done. The assistant director of the pediatric unit of the county hospital tells us, "Up till 18 months ago, we received injectable anti polio and DPT vaccines. But this form of the vaccine is no longer available. Now, the polio vaccine is in the form of drops which are administered orally and contain live viruses. If we give the children this vaccine then we must isolate them for at least a month and a half. Otherwise, it would be a danger to the other children who have not yet been vaccinated. They haven't been vaccinated because they are not of the required age, or are ill. We have had children who got polio for this reason. We are not able to keep them in isolation for this amount of time, because we do not have room for them in the hospital! And in any case, those who come in contact with these vaccinated children, will later on come in contact with those who have not been vaccinated, thus putting the unvaccinated children at risk.

Unvaccinated and unvisited, these abandoned children are exposed. The head of the gynecology unit, Dr. Vlad Tica, warned that, "If they stay very long in this unit, it would present a great danger of infection." A length hospitalization in Romania leads to repeated sicknesses which put all of the newborns in danger. Catalin Grasa maintains that, "Infections in the hospital cannot be avoided since the hospital is a place for sick people and there are all kinds of plagues, biological agents and germs which are resistant to antibiotics and it follows that it is very difficult to put the brakes on various infections which arise." These infections include respiratory infections, food poisoning and other diseases which children get from spending a long time in the hospital. Mihaela Dinisov related, "I have repeatedly drawn attention, in writing, to the proper authorities, to resolve the growing problem of abandoned children in the hospital. But the problem of abandonments still remains."

The new law regarding protection of the rights of the child strongly maintains, to the detriment of other good solutions, the reintegration of the child in his birth family. At this moment it is the only solution approved by the authorities for abandoned children. The rate of efficiency of reintegration in Constanta county is 4.3% in 2005. Since this new law took effect, the labor of the social workers is more comparable to punishment. Mirela Gene says, "When we find the birth parents or extended birth family, we take the child to them, but many times after a short while, they are brought back to the hospital." This happened to at least 6 children in 2004. "These families, when they see the policeman at the door, demanding that they accept the child into the family, agree to this measure but not for long. At the first opportunity, they bring him again to the hospital," explained Ionel Rodica. The process of reintegration continues like a parody until the one who tires first quits. Mirela Gene further explained that one reason for the lack of success is that, "the social workers, instead of having 30 cases, are burdened with 300." According to ordinance Nr. 69 from the year 2004, each child reintegrated must be monitored for at least three months, with a recommendation that it be six months. But this law has not been enforced or applied in many situations.

Mirela Gene told us that there are only 10 adoptable children available, in the sense that they have been declared abandoned. She said, "It is an enormous responsibility to attempt to reintegrate a child into a birth family. Usually these families live in a crushing misery, in unbelievable poverty and in a milieu in which the child is in no way safe!" Many times these birth families live day to day from what they can scrounge from the local garbage dumps. Many times the birth mother and her mother appeal to the authorities at the hospital to find someone to adopt the child so that the child will at least have a future. Yet many times signatures are not gotten for this. Sometimes the birth family visits occasionally and there are occasions when the child has reached the age of three years and the child is once again fetched by the mother.

I was told of one case in which a little boy was abandoned by his parents at the hospital. The little boy went into foster care and is now 5 years old. He has been well cared for by the foster parents. Now, all of a sudden, the parents, who had forgotten about him for 5 years, have decided that they like him; they want to take him home. However, at home there is a brother who is seven years old and he doesn't know how to talk nor how to act. How can it be in the best interest of the child to give him back to a set of parents who didn't want him for 5 years and yet still were not stripped of their parental rights? One of the inspectors from Constanta told us, "This is extremely unfair and not right for the child. He has become attached to the foster parents and to take him from them and give him back to the birth family, which in fact doesn't deserve him, in order that he might live in filthy conditions both from the moral and from the hygienic point of view is not right." Of course in the first place, the child does not want to go into such conditions. One of the social workers asked rhetorically, "How is it in the best interest of the child to reintegrate him into a family that lives at the garbage dump?

An inspector told us, "The greatest impediment to resolving these cases is, in fact, the new law, because it permits birth parents or birth family who cannot or will not raise the child, to intervene repeatedly in the life of the child, even though they have abandoned him. This is not in the best interest of the child." A "European Law" for a country in which poverty and ignorance are extensive doesn't make sense. Such a law is not appropriate for a country in which there exist way too many cases of abandonment or where there are so many lazy people who wait for the state to give them money to raise their children and later to care for them in their old age.

There is another solution which should certainly not be the last one, and which is supported by all that we spoke with. This solution is to strip the parents of their rights because of their abandonment of the child. The sanctioning of parents who abandon their children should take place after a specific period of time, but not a long one. The unanimous opinion of all that we spoke to, is that this new law is in general a law which protects the rights of "forgetful" parents who abandon their children.

In Constanta county, there are a multitude of children in the hospitals and in foster care whose legal situation is unclear. There are only 10 who could possibly be adopted, although there are 37 families who have declared their wish to adopt. Unfortunately, the new law gives no information as to the amount of time that can be spent trying to repeatedly reintegrate the child into the birth family. The law does state that the maximum number of cases that a social worker/manager is permitted to handle is 30, but in fact each has about 300.

We also found that there are numerous children under the age of 2 who are being institutionalized in Tulcea county. One "veteran" of the system is Marian who was abandoned at the beginning of December 2004. This child has not drawn a breath of air which has not been filled with the smell of alcohol and chlorine. There are files on whose cover is written, for more than a year now, "attempting reintegration in the extended birth family". The average rate of abandonment at the Tulcea county hospital is 3 children per month. Zaharcu Nevifer told us that they obtained 14 children's beds in order to care for the average number of children remaining abandoned at the hospital at any one time. But where do these children go if they don't stay at the maternity hospital? Many of them are put in institutions which are supposed to be in the process of being emptied. The law Nr. 272 from the year 2004 states that, "Placement of a child who has not reached the age of 2 in foster care is possible only for the extended family or another foster family and placement of this child in an institution is forbidden. The problem is that not all of the abandoned children have been reintegrated into their families nor given in foster care. At present, in the Cocorii orphanage in Tulcea, there are still 8 children who have not reached the age of 2 and yet are still institutionalized. They have neither medical nor psychological problems at the moment. The law further states that the only time a child under the age of 2 can be put in an institution is when he has severe handicaps. There are still more than 20 children in the Cocorii orphanage and 14 of those do have some problems. But for the 8 healthy ones (who are under the age of 2) we must say that their institutionalization is immoral and illegal. We were not allowed to enter this orphanage. There were plans for two family type homes and a special care center for handicapped children but why the long delay with regard to this project? The funds for this came from PHARE. However, in Tulcea it appears that these foreign funds were spent frivolously. Another orphanage, for example, received foreign funds to build a sports hall. After the sports hall was finished and furnished, another promise of funds came from some French people. With these funds were bought several ovens for baking. Now, the sports hall has been transformed into .. a bakery.