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New school year signals new future for Moldova's institutionalised children
EveryChild’s work to close down Moldova’s Soviet style child care institutions reached a milestone this week. For the first time, all 103 children from Cahul’s children’s institution attended their first day at school in the community (pictured left), a significant step in breaking free from the isolation children at these ‘homes’ suffer.
Usually children brought up in these institutions are completely cut-off from the outside community but EveryChild is working with the Moldovan Government to reintegrate these children into families and communities. The process of attending school outside the Moldovan institution started last year for half of the children, and now the other half have joined their peers in the community school this week.
Chris Rayment, EveryChild’s programme manager for Moldova said: “We are working to ensure these children exit institutional care and return to family and community environments – attending school in the community is a huge step in ensuring these children can go back to loving families and communities where they belong.”
As well as placing children back into biological, extended and foster families, EveryChild is also ensuring that the staff who currently run the Cahul boarding school can adapt their skills to working in the community.
The project comes under the Moldovan Government’s scheme to reform its residential childcare system and half the number of children growing up separated from their families by 2012.