READING ROOM: The lost children of Bulgaria

Did you know that Bulgaria has the highest percentage of children in Europe living in institutions? When the Iron Curtain fell, all media attention focused on orphanages in Romania, and no one really bothered about Bulgaria. So how does Bulgaria have this sad record, 17 years after the end of communism?

Orphanages without orphans
For a start, let's forget about orphanages: less than two per cent of children placed in institutions are orphans (Bulgarian Government statistics). So what we are really talking about are institutions for children deprived of parental care. There are about 150 such institutions throughout the country, caring for more than 10 000 children. Some of them are run by the Ministry of Health, for small children (newborn to three years), some others by the Ministry of Education, and others by municipalities (for handicapped children).

The Agency for Social Assistance employs social workers and the Agency for Child Protection issues recommendations for the ministries. With decentralisation underway, further responsibility and finances are being transferred to municipalities. Add to this children living permanently in special and correctional schools (about 12 000), and you get the whole picture. Sounds complicated? - So it is, too. The lack of co-ordination between the different administrations involved has proved damaging. And the system has been dysfunctional, with children up to seven years old in homes for toddlers, with healthy children in homes for medical care, etc. And of course there have been some horror stories: two children died in a social home in Dobromirtsi a year ago: one starved to death (the official diagnosis was sepsis), the other one burnt; massive sexual abuse was reported in a home in Berkovitsa last October.

Some improvement in sight
However, most of the actors involved acknowledge improvement in two fields: first in the recognition of the problem. "There is a change in mentalities," says Marie Halbherr, chairwoman for charities at Bulgaria's International Women's Club. Bulgarian National Television has been touching on the subject in its news programme on various occasions. "The child as an individual, requiring an individual solution, is better taken into account," says Halbherr. "The collectivist approach is over." Under communism, the regime simply wanted those children out of sight - which explains why many of the institutions are in far-off places. Denial was the rule, plus the misconception that the state could run everything. Turning things around takes a long time, but it has definitely started. And there has been a change in legislation, too.

De-institutionalising the children
It may be hard to pronounce, and still harder to implement, but de-institutionalisation is the key word. It is part of the recommendations of the European Union; it is the official policy of the Bulgarian Government. It simply means that a child needs the tender loving care of a family to develop! According to research on children in Romania, for every one month spent in an institution, a child's development is set back three months. Providing alternative care is thus vital. This can mean:

-Re-integration of the child in his biological family. Since the children are not orphans, it may sound like a good idea. But the reasons they were placed in institutions in the first place remain: poverty, broken homes and families, social isolation. Unless the family is actively supported, re-integration makes little sense.

-Foster care. This involves the selection, training and payment of foster families. It has gotten off, albeit, to a slow start: at the end of 2005, only 48 children had been placed in foster care.

-Adoption. While international adoption has been made much more difficult, theoretically adoption by Bulgarian families has been made easier. However, only 1284 children were adopted in 2005, half of them by Bulgarian families. And while the numbers of children eligible to be adopted and of parents willing and eligible to adopt have been increasing, the numbers of actual adoptions have been going down. Insufficient organisation is one of the factors; lack of transparency is another as far as international adoption is considered.

Laura Parker, executive director for Absolute Return for Kids (ARK)-Bulgaria, mentions the example of one American couple who has been waiting for two years to adopt two black kids. This couple has followed all the procedures, and the children have no chance of being adopted by a Bulgarian family. The children are now 12, meaning three precious years of their lifetime has been lost. Such cases only question the credibility of the whole system. A new law is now being examined by the Parliament that would make any child having remained one year in an institution eligible for adoption.

Inclusion of handicapped children, currently in special boarding schools, in mainstream schools. A secondary legislation to that effect is currently being worked on.

Opening of small, family-type homes for children for whom no family placement can be found.

Obstacles
All this may sound very nice on paper, but progress has been slow so far.
Only 18 institutions have been closed. "I know the critics," says Sabina Sabeva, executive director of International Social Service-Bulgaria. "The children have simply been transferred to other institutions; but at least it's a start, it shows that it can be done." Closing institutions really means having identified alternative care for every child beforehand - not an easy process. And the people working there are afraid to lose their job, especially in remote villages where little else is available.

-Lack of staff and training is generally recognised as one of the main obstacles to any improvement. Social workers are overworked and underpaid. No solution can be workable without more, better trained and better paid social workers.

-Lack of resources. The opinions differ here. A better question may be: how are the resources being used? Quite simply, it is more costly to maintain an institution than to place children in foster care. In the meantime, however, some of the buildings are so dilapidated that they need urgent repair. Some of the funds under PHARE projects of the EU for child protection have, thus, been allocated for the rehabilitation of infrastructures - "and," insists Fernando Ponz Canto, head of Political Affairs at the Delegation of the European Commission to Bulgaria, "it was badly needed". However, for the most recent project for de-institutionalisation of children, the EU has set a limit on the money that can go to the renovation of infrastructures (40 per cent). And targets have been agreed on the number of children who have to leave institutions (20 per cent until 2009) in an attempt to speed up the process. "But it is essential," says Ponz Canto, "to find the best solution for every child prior to closing the institution".

Addressing root causes
Whatever progress is being made has no meaning if children continue to be placed in institutions. Prevention is essential. "For the time being" - says Iva Boneva, Bulgaria director of Save the Children - "as many children come in as come out". Most of the time, the children who come in are either of Roma origin or handicapped. So touching upon the subject of orphanages really means addressing poverty and discrimination. Boneva mentions the example of babies being sent to social homes in the winter: "The families cannot afford the heating, so the babies have no chance of survival at home."

Then there is the issue of segregation in education: close to 48 000 children are excluded from mainstream education, whether they are sent to "special schools" or whether they drop out of school. When they grow up, those children will depend on social assistance.

In the long run, the cost of social exclusion is unbearable and much higher than that of inclusive education. "What we need," says Kapka Panayotova, executive director of the Centre for Independent Living, "is public resources to be injected in the mainstream schools to help them accommodate all children, whatever their ethnicity or handicap. Then they will be able to care for themselves as adults, and not be a burden to society".
Whatever the difficulties, one thing is certain: with a birth rate notoriously low, Bulgaria cannot afford to lose so many of its children to a dire future. And slowness of reforms is especially damaging when it comes to children, who, as the saying goes, grow up so quickly - and should not grow up deprived of love and affection.

Best practices
NGOs in Bulgaria have developed original solutions, which, if applied nationally, could dramatically alter the fate of children living in institutions.

- Caring for the children: the Baba Programme.
A Bulgarian NGO, Miloserdie, started this programme. The idea was simple: given the acute lack of social workers, to use the workforce available in villages: the babas (grandmothers, in Bulgarian). The babas are trained to take care of one particular child, who thus gets individualised love and attention, as well as recognition in the village community; in turn, the baba gets a small salary badly needed to complement her meagre pension. The International Women's Club extended this programme to a handicapped children's home in Petrovo, with results close to miracles. Of course closing institutions would be better, but in the short term, the Baba Programme has proved its worth.

- Closing the institutions: Absolute Return for Kids and its pilot project in Stara Zagora.
Parker wants institutions to be closed, and to be closed properly - e.g., after an individual solution has been found for every child. So she is working on it, starting with three institutions in Stara Zagora. This involves international help, of course: the number of social workers has been doubled and foster care and adoption experts from Sweden and the UK provide training. While challenging to co-ordingate, in the end a Memorandum of Understanding has been signed by the municipality, the three ministries involved (Labour and Social, Education, Health) and other administrations. By March 2008, two of the institutions should be closed, with the children being adopted, reintegrated in their families or placed in foster care or in family-type homes - the latter will have to be built by ARK. The third institution, ideally, could be transformed into a medical centre for those children requiring medical care - the other ones being placed in families.

- Helping the children to integrate into society: Care Leaver Integration programme.
What happens to the children when they turn 18? Very simple: they have to leave the institutions. With no preparation for the outside world, the girls are more often than not fated for prostitution (cf. the excellent Bulgarian movie: Lady Zee), while the boys for crime. So a Swiss NGO, International Social Service (ISS), decided to do something about it. It created a Bulgarian branch and started its work in Veliko Turnovo, Sevliyevo and Lovech. Like for ARK, the capability of bringing the different involved actors together (directors of institutions, municipalities, etc) proved decisive. Professional training and transition homes were provided, with the aim of offering an individual solution for every child involved. Of the 122 young people who have gone through the programme, 81 per cent now work and 13 per cent made it to college, leaving only six per cent aside. Now the programme is continuing on its own in those municipalities, and ISS Bulgaria is extending it to Smolyan, Plovdiv and Vratsa.

- Promoting inclusion of handicapped children: Save the Children, Every Child, the municipality of Haskovo and the Centre for Independent Living.
If you are the parent of a handicapped child in Bulgaria, you don't have many options for his/her education: your child will probably end up in a special school, where he will have little chance to develop his abilities, and where he will be de facto institutionalised - those schools often being boarding-schools. What most NGOs advocate is inclusion of handicapped children in mainstream schools.

Every Child has worked together with the municipality of Haskovo to show that it was feasible; ideally, this pilot project should be extended all over the country. But this requires a lot of commitment and fighting: in 2006, an association of parents of handicapped children, an equal-opportunity association, paved the way by suing the Ministry of Education under the anti-discrimination act.

Progress has been made since then, and legislation for the inclusion of handicapped children should be adopted in 2007. This means that public resources will have to be injected in the mainstream schools to help them accommodate all children (access ramps and elevators, training for the teachers, creation of resource centres to provide additional support for the children?).

How to help?
- Support the International Women's Club's numerous initiatives and programmes, attend their events: www.iwc-sofia.com
- Give money, get involved, make a commitment.

Here are some of the NGOs we would recommend:
Samariani. This NGO works in Stara Zagora with ARK. Provides counseling and support for families, runs a mother and baby unit and a crisis shelter as well as a mobile community team that does prevention work with the local community.
Tel: 042/ 621 083, office@samaritansbg.com

Cedar Foundation. The Cedar Foundation works specifically in Kazanluk with orphanages, schools and a hospital: www.cedarfoundation.org

Centre for Independent Living (see above).
Tel: 02/ 983 31 17, www.cil-bg.org
Bank references: Perva Investitsionna Banka - BIC: FINVBGSF
IBAN: BG39 FINV 9150 10BG N04G ZE

Every Child. UK-based organisation. To be considered if you want to sponsor a child in Bulgaria: www.everychild.org.uk

Save the Children UK, Bulgaria
1000-Sofia, 38 Ivan Vazov Str
Tel: 02/ 986 52 52, fax: 02/ 988 14 76
www.savethechildrenbg.org

Bulgarian Child Foundation
Tel: 02/ 855 81 62, ridgway@bulgarianchild.org, www.bulgarianchild.org

All the figures mentioned in this article, unless otherwise specified, are drawn from the Save the Children UK Alternative Monitoring Report on Bulgaria 2006.

One lev makes a difference

Bulgarska Koleda, started in 2003 by President Georgi Purvanov, is now in its fourth annual fund-raising drive, in which it hopes to collect money for equipment and supply purchases in 10 children's clinics and children's or neonatal hospital divisions across Bulgaria, in addition to providing much-needed medical assistance to 35 children. According to their website www.bgkoleda.bg, the initiative has already collected almost 150 000 leva to help to meet those needs.

Since 2003, the initiative has collected more than 4.7 million leva in total. This money has been used to pay for treatment, therapy, medicines and operations for more than 80 children, and to purchase modern medical equipment for 20 children's clinics and hospital divisions. As from the beginning, a one-lev donation can be made by sending an SMS or calling 1117 from M-Tel, Vivatel or Globul (or 0900 1117 from a BTC landline).