Social Workers Act More Often on Cases Where Complains are Filed

Translated from: Evenimentul Zilei Thurs. March 30, 2006 Author: Tatiana Dabija

Social Workers Act More Often on Cases Where Complains are Filed

In Romanian villages, thousands of children are raised in inhuman conditions in poverty and in wickedness. Social workers, the ones who should see to it that these kinds of cases do not happen, are very few. Many times they are not allowed by their bosses and because of budget limitations to do their job. Here are three situations in which they failed.

Case 1: March, 2006 "The Girl in the Cage" Mariana Bourici, age 2, was taken from her grandfather by the Bacau CPS because the grandfather kept her for long hours in a cage bed covered with a roof of wire mesh. At the moment, Mariana is in the care of a maternal assistant.

Case 2: May, 2005 In a Village in Braila County, a little boy, age 3, was kept tied by a rope fixed to a wall. This is how his grandfather, Radu Barbu, thought that he could keep his grandchild from harm while the grandfather worked in the garden. The child was taken by the CPS and put in an orphanage.

Case 3: May, 2004 A 3 year old boy, Costel Serban, from Bahna, Neamt County, ended up in the hospital because he had been kept imprisoned in a tiny room filled with garbage and tied with a rope, to his bed. He was only fed corn mush. Costel does not know how to talk, is malnourished and has been taken to an orphanage.

Prevention of Problems is not Being Done in the Area of Child Protection

Petru Melinte, president of the SERA Foundation in Bucharest, says, "There is no correlation between what social workers learn in school and what they find in the field." Because of the many problems in the area of child protection, many non profit organizations have gotten involved in helping the children. Andre Muit, president of Bethany Foundation, says, "Many social workers are used for other things and do not have time to monitor the cases." There are many unsupervised children, particularly in villages, who are in grave danger. Consequently, he believes that the local governments should be more involved in preventing cases of maltreatment of children.

The president of non profit organizations for child protection, Bogdan Simion, says that the authorities are overwhelmed. He says that the law is a generous one but the problem of preventing difficult situations is impeded by the law. He says, "There are too few social workers and there are too few financial resources allocated to their activities. They are not given transportation and yet they must cover a huge area. Petru Melinte further adds that preventing social problems does not interest many people because "it doesn't bring in votes whereas resolving problems that arise encourages votes".