Media

Report on disabled children in Romania

Text of speech delivered by Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne MEP
at a press conference to launch the report “Assessment of Institutions for children with disabilities”. 

Bucharest, 31st March 2007 

“Romania’s child welfare system has been thoroughly reformed and successive governments have done a good job of getting children out of institutions and into family and community care.

“Unfortunately there are some disabled children in Romania who have not benefited from these reforms and who continue to live in residential institutions – some of which are not up to EU standards.  The Government has acknowledged the problem and is committed to finding a solution.  My charity – The Children’s High Level Group – is committed to supporting this where we can.

“The report we present here today is something of a first.  It is the first time that all these institutions have been evaluated by the same research team, using the same methodology.  In order to appreciate this fact one needs to understand what I would call the institutional context: responsibility for disabled children’s institutions is divided between the ministries of education, health and labour.  These ministries do not always coordinate with each other as well as they should.

“Understanding the problem is an essential first step in finding a solution, and sensational reporting from a small number of locations creates the wrong impression and does not help.  By providing a national overview and identifying the problem areas, the Romanian government now have an effective tool for action.

“There are many problems highlighted in the report: there is a lack of internal ramps in almost three quarters of institutions; there is a lack of specialist therapists; there are training, staffing and infrastructure problems.

“But there are also a lot of successes: many institutions have been renovated; many have been transformed into small, modern, family-type units, almost all of them have access to qualified medical staff, and it must be said that the overall majority of disabled children in Romania live with their families and it is only a small minority who live in residential institutions.

“Hopefully this report will provide researchers, policymakers and journalists an objective source of information against which some of the more sensationalist reports can be compared”