Romania:
Family planning
Project: Itinerant Family Planning
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CARE Belgium contribution: CARE Belgium supports the project through communication, advocacy and fundraising activities, in collaboration with other members of the CARE network.
Location: 23 counties (out of 41 in total in Romania)
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Context:
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Thirty years ago, the world discovered Romanian orphanages, veritable death houses where 120,000 children lived in extreme deprivation. Some were left tied to their beds all day. In 1989, abandonment had become a commonplace act supported by the state. This system was only abolished in 1997, but it continues to persist today due to a challenging economic context.
Since 1990, the association SERA, now merged with CARE, has been working to uphold every child's right to grow up in a family. We develop programs for social inclusion, abandonment prevention, and the closure of outdated placement centers. Our various projects have already helped more than 85,000 vulnerable children.
Despite the gradual reform of the child protection system since the fall of Ceaușescu in 1989, the number of women continuing to give birth to and abandon unwanted children remained very high for a long time. In 2012, more than 900 newborns were abandoned in the country's maternity wards. Even though access to contraception is improving, with 70% of women reporting using a contraceptive method in 2011, Romania has the highest abortion rate in the European Union (480 abortions per 1,000 births, compared to a European average of 226 per 1,000).
General objective
To provide information and promote access to social and medical care (especially gynaecological care) and contraception for parents, particularly vulnerable and isolated women. The ultimate aim is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, and thus the number of abortions and abandoned children.
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Beneficiaries: 100,000 direct beneficiaries, mainly women.
Duration: 20 years - ongoing
Project description
Since 2000, around fifty social workers and nurses have been traveling across Romania to reach parents who lack access to existing family planning services in more than half of the country's counties. We train and fund mobile family planning teams. These teams are then placed under the responsibility of local authorities.
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Between 2000 and 2021, CARE invested more than €865,500 to establish these teams in Romania, which have reached and advised over 110,000 beneficiaries, more than half of whom decided to use a contraceptive method. In the regions concerned, there has been a significant decrease in the number of unwanted pregnancies, as reflected in the reduction of abortions and child abandonment among these vulnerable populations. Since 2021, these family planning access activities have been directly integrated into social inclusion services. These services include activities for the prevention of child abandonment, family reintegration, and socio-professional integration for young people. They typically employ a team of three people: a psychologist, a nurse, and a social worker.