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EveryChild opens new parent and baby unit in Moldova
EveryChild’s efforts to help keep families together in Moldova were strengthened this week with the opening of a new Parent and Baby Unit. The unit will provide refuge for families who are at risk of becoming separated. In Moldova children separated from their families usually end up in one of the country’s grim Soviet era childcare institutions.
In the new unit, the first of its kind in the capital Chisinau, there are facilities for four sets of parents and children with plenty of psychological and social support on hand. This is the second EveryChild supported Parent and Baby Unit to open in Moldova.
Over 95% of all children in institutional care in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are not orphans. Most have been abandoned by desperate parents who feel they have no alternative but to place their own children into care.
However, EveryChild believes institutional care can never replace the love of a family and works hard to prevent abandonment and separation by providing support to vulnerable families with services like the Parent and Baby Units.Child abandonment in Chisinau, has already dropped from 130 cases in 2004 to 57 in 2007 partly thanks to the work of EveryChild.
EveryChild’s work in Moldova has been commended by Chisinau’s Department for Protection of Children’s Rights who say they plan to expand the use of the ground breaking Parent and Baby Units right across the region.
Anna Feuchtwang, Chief Executive of EveryChild said: “I am delighted that another Parent and Baby Unit has opened in Moldova. These Units have proven that parents on the brink of abandoning their children can be convinced there is a way for them to stay together. They just need the right support at the right time."
"We need to see more governments in the region commit to this and other types of family support services so that the supply of children to their outdated institutions is cut off. If that happens then the institutions themselves will surely become a thing of the past,” she said.