“Painting and rehabilitating orphanages is like re-decorating hell.” This is how Hope and Homes for Children’s Director of Programmes, Dr Delia Pop, described attempts to improve the physical conditions in orphanages.
Why? Well, it’s not so much the physical conditions that are the issue. It’s the human conditions, or more accurately, the inhuman conditions which damage and destroy children.
But not Tatiana.
Delia and I were in Moldova recently and met her.
Tatiana is five years old and one of the bravest children I have ever met.
Her mother was told that she would never be able to care for her properly and was coerced into giving her up to the state orphanage system. Tatiana has Down Syndrome, a condition that with the right support can be managed at home by a family.
By the age of four and a half Tatiana weighed just 10kg or about one and a half stone. Nothing to do with her condition. She had been confined to a cot all her life. Unable to walk, speak, clean her hands, she spent almost her entire life lying on her side bent in a V shape, staring at her knees.
At feeding time, meat and potatoes were liquidised along with the dessert into a slop and children in the orphanage were force-fed. Really force-fed, with one staffer holding the child’s nose and restraining her, and another jamming the bottle into her mouth. Tatiana would regurgitate it. A minor act of defiance against a system that was violating her on a daily basis.
She had learned not to cry. Learned not to cry! She was never held. Imagine never having had the experience of being held by someone who’s squeezing you because they just plain and simple love you.
Almost five years old, Tatiana had the cognitive and physical development typical of a five month old.
This is what orphanages do to children. Orphanage care is associated with high levels of neglect, which dramatically impairs the development of children. They are associated with violence and with high levels of mortality. Tatiana was hanging onto her life by her very finger tips.
Our partner organisation, CCF Moldova (also a team of heroes!), that has been trained and is funded by Hope and Homes for Children, went into fight for Tatiana. At first the staff in the state orphanage complained, “There is no point because Tatiana is disabled.” CCF would have had none of it.
They found her a foster family. By the time I met Tatiana a few weeks ago she had been free from the state orphanage for ten months.
Her weight had doubled, she had caught up with her cognitive and physical development by almost two years (adjusting for her condition), she was walking and dancing (!!!!). But above all, the love in that room was enough to fuel the happiness of a million people.
Tatiana is now learning to feed herself. Proper food. She can wash her hands and face. She has her own clothes and toys. She has an identity. And she is seeing a speech therapist. We fully expect her to be able to begin speaking within the next year. I bet she is a singer too.
I really cannot put into words the joy I felt at seeing Tatiana so happy, nor how inspired I was by her foster family – a couple in their sixties whose adult children also doted on her.
I have no doubt that Tatiana would be dead had Hope and Homes for Children and CCF not stepped in.
And there are many more children who are benefiting from our work. CCF Moldova have worked closely with the Government to develop, improve and roll out services such as day care for children with special needs, mother and baby units, small group homes, housing for vulnerable families, foster services as well as family support services. These services are developed to prevent children from being separated from their families in the first place and to provide alternative types of family care so that orphanages are not needed regardless of the circumstances of the child.
It is working. We have already seen the closure of a number of state orphanages like Tarigrad and Sarata Noua and we are progressing the closure of others. The Government and local authorities in Moldova are increasingly committed to eradicating the injustice of institutional care of children.
Now that we are working directly in and shaping the reform of child protection in some twenty five countries, it is our ambition to see the global eradication of institutional care of children. Check out: www.hopeandhomes.org
Mark Waddington 