Wednesday, June 29, Oradea, Romania
I woke up this morning (as I did yesterday) to the sound of children. They start the day with plenty of commotion – laughing, shouting, crying, running – like the normal, healthy children they are. Jeanne and I are staying in the guest room here at Hope House Family Center, and it’s just as lively a place as I remember it.
One of the Hope House residents.
Yesterday (Tuesday) was a day full of adventure – and full of reminders as to why this work is so important.
Corina had planned to clear her schedule to spend time with us, but several pressing matters kept her busy for much of the day. As it turned out, we really enjoyed the opportunity to “tag along” and see some of what she deals with in her daily work.
First up: a birth family was visiting Hope House to meet with Corina. Their daughter “Ella,” who is now 3 ½ years old, was abandoned at birth in the hospital. At the age of seven months, Corina took her from the hospital (where she had never been visited) and placed her directly into a Romanian foster family. She has been there ever since, growing up happily with the people she knows as her mother, father, brother, and sister.
Now, under Romania’s new child welfare law, social workers are required to re-register each child in foster care annually. Corina must now contact each birth family every year– including all extended relatives – and request their consent (again) to keep their child in foster care. This regulation puts a huge burden on over-worked social workers who are supervising the foster care system.
Even worse, this process could, in many cases, jeopardize the well-being of the child. Many birth families are living in a hardened culture of extreme poverty and ignorance, scrounging for their existence by begging, stealing, prostitution, and other black market activities. As calloused as it sounds, many of these parents would be happy to leave their infants in institutions and foster care until age 5 or 6. Then, when the child is old enough to help with begging, manual labor, or even prostitution, they want the child back. Under the old law, many such parents would literally forget about their institutionalized children. But under the new law, someone is required to come asking about their child each year—giving ample opportunities for them to “remember” that they want their child, who is now a potential laborer in the “family business.” So much for the glorified ideal of “family reunification.”
Yesterday morning, we watched from our second-story window as two horse-drawn Gypsy carts pulled up in front of the orphanage. It’s hard not to feel sadness when you see these degraded people—their faces hard and lined, their clothes colorful and dramatic yet terribly worn. They stayed for quite a while, talking with Corina about the child they left in the hospital nearly four years ago. Turns out they asked for money—around $500—to buy a new horse. Give us that, they said, and we’ll leave the child with her foster family. (How sad that birth parents would view a horse as more valuable than their own child. This is the hard reality in Romania.)
Of course, Corina didn’t give them what they asked. She has never paid money for a child and never will. She plans to meet with them again next week, to try to resolve the matter.
We rode with Corina as she drove Ella back home. Sitting between Jeanne and me in the back seat, the little girl watched eagerly out the window, trying to catch sight of her house. Finally, she called out: “There it is! There’s my house!” We tried hard to keep up with her as she ran down the sidewalk, opened the gate, and jumped straight into her foster mother’s arms. I had to blink away tears as I saw this family reunited with their foster daughter, knowing that at any time she could be taken from them and placed in a wretched life she’s never known. My prayer is that, despite their financial need, the foster family will choose to pursue adoption for this little girl. I can’t imagine how devastated Ella would be to lose all that she knows and loves, and to be plunged suddenly into an environment of extremely unsanitary conditions, manual labor, and abuse. Families should be reunified when possible, and when it will benefit the child – but not at such a dreadful cost.
Our second stop was in the city center. Corina was looking for another birth mother, who abandoned her son at Hope House last year. A family has now expressed interest in adopting the little boy. Corina was confident that this young woman would sign papers to initiate the adoption process—if Corina could only find her. She lives on the street and works as a prostitute, and it’s never easy to locate her.
The process of finding this birth mother was eye-opening. We stopped to question one of her acquaintances: a blind man, who works in an organized “mafia” of beggars. We visited her usual spot for soliciting customers. Finally, success. A Romanian pastor who works with street teenagers knew how to locate her – and around 6:00 p.m., Corina finally was able to ask her to sign papers for her son. She willingly agreed, and the boy is now on his way to a new life.
At Hope House, the children receive loving attention from the staff.
As I sit writing now, the house is again bustling with activity and the sound of children’s voices. It’s hard to reconcile these beautiful, sweet children with their wretched backgrounds. What a joy to know that, at least for these few little ones, the future will be much brighter than the past.
Jayme