Childhood Poverty in Romania

The impact of Poverty on Romanian Children:

Early Childhood Professional, Theresa Creel, has worked with different advocate organizations on behalf of Romanian children over the past 17 years.  Ms. Creel primarily works with the Institute for Human Dignity, which supports children’s rights and provides charity for children living in poverty in Romania. Ms. Creel also works with Jesus the Hope of Romania, which advocates for educational aspects for children in poverty, children with AIDS, orphaned children, disabled children, and support of higher quality education for children in poverty. 

I asked Ms. Creel to share her thoughts and experiences related to child poverty in Romania.  Ms. Creel (personal communication, March 18, 2013) responded:

There was great hope when communism collapsed in December 1989 after years of tremendous suffering under the totalitarian regime of Ceausescu. Unfortunately, this hope has often been challenged by continued and widespread poverty, and there are extreme situations for a large segment of Romania's vulnerable populations. I remember going to Romania for the first time more than 17 years ago after communism fell, and being emotionally devastated by the poverty and thousands of abandoned children. Romania was nicknamed "The Land of Orphans." There are still children who live on the streets, some I have seen living underground in sewers to keep warm in the winter-living with dead animals. I have visited hospitals where children with HIV were huddled together in one room with children diagnosed with tuberculosis. I have seen hundreds of children with little or no medical care and limited educational opportunities. Alex was abandoned when he was four years old. His mother put him on a train with two sandwiches and Alex suffered terrible abuse living on the streets of Timisoara, Romania. I remember Cosmin who was abandoned by his mother because he was HIV positive. She left Cosmin on the steps of a hospital where he died when he was a young adolescent; no one wanted him in life and no one would claim his body in death, so he was placed in a building behind the hospital for several days until a charitable organization offered to bury him. I have visited rows of cribs of abandoned and healthy babies in hospitals where they lived until they were almost two years old; it was not unusual for the infants to receive only about five minutes of personal attention per day. The depravation and lack of love and stimulation left many of these children disabled; after the hospital, they went to live in orphanages.  I remember going to one home to bring food for a single mother of four children. She had a blind infant (caused by the inappropriate amount of oxygen as a premature baby). Their home had one light bulb working because a neighbor had wired electricity from their home to help her as she could not pay her electric bill. There are not words to really describe this kind of poverty.

It is not only the children who are greatly impacted by poverty in Romania. A large segment of the population is Roma and the Roma are often more uneducated and unemployed. Discrimination against this ethnic group is fairly common. There are also limited safety nets for support of the elderly or disabled, and it is not unusual to see them living on the streets or in terrible living conditions. Walking down a street on Christmas Eve, I saw a young man trying to dig for a piece of dry bread on the street. His hands were crumpled and he could not grab the bread. He explained how he had been in a car accident and became disabled, and could not find a job. I bought him dinner and arranged for him to have a place to go regularly to eat.

There are no overnight fixes to address the level of poverty or all the myriad complex issues in Romania, but there are opportunities to help and make a difference. As with all genuine help, there are best methods and better provision. For abandoned and orphaned children, this means finding families they belong to, not orphanages they survive in. It means compassion that translates into effective support of micro-enterprise, educational opportunities, training for leadership in all spheres of community life, and it means improvement of healthcare and other systems. While no one person can effectively change everything - individuals, organizations, and churches can do something. It is always a privilege to be a small part of something that benefits another person.

According to the UNICEF Website, Romanian children from poor and rural areas are more likely than other children to be abandoned, institutionalized, to drop out of school, and later to be found on the streets. Furthermore, there are emerging issues such as children left behind by parents migrating to other countries in search of better job opportunities. 
Weaknesses in preventive and integrated community-based services, combined with poor family care practices and changing social norms and values have lead to these manifestations (http://www.unicef.org/romania/overview.html).

Save the Children and UNICEF have called upon political parties to undertake ten commitments to improve the situation of children in Romania.  These ten commitments have been included in a Manifesto for Children, launched on November 20, 2012 – to mark the Universal Children’s Day.

By endorsing the Manifesto, initiative supporters commit to promote in the coming period public policies that will contribute to the:

1.  Provision of quality social services for child protection and for the prevention of child separation from family (through: preventive public policies; adequate funding to deploy at least one social worker in every community; no placement of children under three and children with disabilities in institutions);

2.  Social inclusion of disadvantaged Roma children (through: access to education, social and health services for Roma children);

3.  Prevention of violence against children (through measures in schools, in the society and related to the use of new technologies and the online environment, including by supporting parent education and positive discipline);

4.  Protection of children with disabilities (through: education, health and social protection services for them and by addressing discrimination and stigmatisation);

5.  Provision of quality health care to mother and child (through measures and funds that can help to reduce maternal and under-5 mortality rates);

6.  Development of services for children’s mental health (through public policies and access to medical and recovery services, including by setting up new mental health centers);

7.  Delivery of quality education to all children (through: adequate budgetary allocations; drop-out prevention; early education promotion);

8.  Strengthened cooperation between the public sector and non-governmental organizations (through: NGO involvement in public policy development and budgetary allocation decision making; by capitalizing on the expertise of NGOs; by working together to develop specialized services for children);

9.  Enhanced consultation with and participation of children in decision making (through: strengthened Student Councils; access for children to useful and child-friendly information; authorities’ consultation with children);

10.           More efficient monitoring and management of child rights implementation (by setting up Children’s Ombudsman; mandating a specialized unit to oversee child rights application and relevant evaluation; choosing local and county agencies responsible for managing child rights fulfillment). 

(http://www.unicef.org/romania/media_21062.html)

The new insights have I learned from my professional exchanges and information I have gathered from the UNICEF Romanian website is that poverty, diminished healthy conditions, lack of education, and social issues has had devastating and inhumane effects on children.  I am deeply saddened and horrified of the conditions that these children must endure.  There is much to be done to advocate for child’s rights and wellness in Romania.  However, improvements can happen with the support of policy changes, increased societal education, and the increased efforts of charitable organizations and individuals.  I admire Ms. Creel’s dedication in advocating on behalf of these little ones.  In previous studies we learned that early childhood professionals are often the voice of children, because in situations such as these, children do not have a voice.  It is up to us to make a difference!