EveryChild
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EC2A 3DR
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Fostering brings hope across the world
As the press reports this week a shortage of more than 5,000 foster carers in the UK, we are reminded how, across the world, EveryChild’s pioneering work on developing foster care is changing the lives of children forever.
Thanks to our generous supporters, EveryChild has been able to play a leading role in the introduction of foster care to parts of Eastern and Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union. The fledgling foster services we have campaigned for are saving vulnerable children from incarceration in outdated Soviet-era children’s homes or abandonment to the streets. Instead, many now have the chance to grow up in a loving family.
Viku and Eugen (pictured) were found begging on the streets of Moldova’s capital Chisinau. Their mother had died in a road accident and their grandparents could not cope with their care. At the end of last year EveryChild managed to place them in one of Moldova’s very first foster families where they are living together safe and secure in a loving home.
In countries like Moldova, fostering is a very new concept and previously there was no alternative but to place children like Viku and Eugen in a large children’s home.
The fact is that of the 11,400 children in institutional care in Moldova who cannot return to their families, at least half are suitable for fostering.
EveryChild has been instrumental in setting up Moldova’s first foster families and persuading the Moldovan Government to establish a nationwide network of foster care. They have now committed to creating 2,000 foster families over the next four years as an alternative to large scale institutional childcare.
Of course, fostering is only part of the solution to the reform of childcare services – albeit a vital part. EveryChild is also concentrating on the development of services that support families in crisis to prevent children from being abandoned in the first place. We hope, with your help, that we can finally make Soviet-era children’s homes a thing of the past.
Click here to meet more of Moldova’s first foster families