September 6, 2013
Moldova
Moldova took a big step forward in the area of child and youth protection. On 14th June 2013 the Moldovan Parliament passed law N.140 on vulnerable children and children lacking family care. The law comes into force on 1st January 201.Caritas Czech Republic contributed to its passing.
In Moldova the 1965 law on guardianship is still in effect. The law defines the conditions of child protection, including the protection of children without parental care as the consequence of migration. The law became obsolete and does not take the present situation into consideration.
The new law was created and passed with the contribution of Caritas Czech Republic, which cooperates with the Faculty of Sociology of Moldova State University, along with CRIC (Child Rights Information Center Moldova) who together work on a project with the aim of creating a national platform for working with abandoned children.
In 2012 a quantitative needs analysis concerning abandoned children was carried out as part of a national questionnaire survey. The data collected revealed a picture of the situation in the country as a whole but also in the separate districts. More about the survey can be found in the article “Moldova: Every fifth child grows up parentless”
It was the data gathered in the survey that helped to develop and then pass the new law on vulnerable and parentless child protection. The law specifies the basic activities, responsibilities and powers of child care authorities, it defines the procedure of identification of these children, it demonstrates what measures to take and provides complex care on the basis of an individual aid plan. So far, practice showed that social workers were unable to identify these children, and could not give adequate aid or support. The passing of the new law will enable guardian authorities (city halls) take part more actively in securing children’s rights protection. At the same time the Moldovan Ministry of Labour, Family, and Social Protection will have the opportunity to penalize those city mayors who do not fulfil their responsibilities in the field of children’s rights protection.
After passing the law, Caritas Czech Republic and other partners developed the training material needed for the
social workers and local authorities’ employees as well. This is improving the quality of their work and their readiness to act. Children abandoned by their relatives are benefitting more from the new concept of legal protection. Among other things, the materials include international legal documents dealing with child protection and information about the child protection system in Moldova. This includes general social conditions, identifying social conditions of vulnerable children, procedures and means of finding these children, assessment of these techniques, aid and monitoring of vulnerable and parentless children, and social benefits for children. An identification form to be completed by social workers is included. The data collected will be added to a database of vulnerable and parentless children. The database will be administered b the Ministry of Labour, Family, and Social Protection. It will be interconnected with related state institutions to keep a record of all vulnerable children, monitor their situation and supervise the whole process. Training of 898 local authorities’ employees, 1150 social workers and 104 experts from local social assistance and family protection units is in progress. Each training participant receives a handbook on child protection. Moreover, since the end of 2013 they have been able to work with a nation-wide database of vulnerable children.
