EveryChild
4 Bath Place
Rivington Street
London
EC2A 3DR
T +44 (0)20 7749 2468
F +44 (0)20 7729 8339
Christmas comes early for Moldova's abandoned kids
Victory for UK charity’s foster care campaign in Moldova
Thanks to sustained efforts by EveryChild, the Moldovan Government has passed new legislation that will prevent thousands of children from entering institutional care. The new Foster Care Regulations will ensure that fostering is promoted and properly managed. The regulations have been passed in response to a six year campaign by EveryChild.
Foster care is almost entirely unheard of in Moldova, the poorest country in Europe, and there are currently over 11,000 children in the country’s large Soviet era ‘orphanages’. EveryChild has been running groundbreaking projects in Moldova that establish foster care services that give children the chance to grow up in loving families instead of institutions. The success of these services and lobbying by EveryChild has resulted in the Moldovan Government investing in the promotion and development of foster care across the whole country. EveryChild helped develop the new regulations which provide proper funding and professional standards for foster carers and outline their rights and responsibilities.
EveryChild Chief Executive Anna Feuchtwang said: “We are thrilled that the Moldovan Government has prioritised foster care. This change would simply not have happened without EveryChild’s efforts and particularly the vision of our team in Moldova who were at times the lone voice in the country promoting fostering and demonstrating how well it can work. The big challenge now will be to work with the Government to ensure that every single Moldovan child in need of a loving foster family is found one and prevented from entering the institutional care system.”
Meet some of Moldova's first foster families
See our coverage of Moldova's first foster families on the BBC