The duration of the project: 2020 -2021
They are the children of Romania
The initiative has as its goal the improvement of the law, which, at this point in time, makes the process of adoption, and many of the children living in institutions don't have the opportunity to grow up in a family.
With the cooperation of General Directorates of Social Assistance and Child Protection from across the country, FACIAS created an up-to-date analysis of the situation and the real difficulties within the system .
In Romania nowadays, almost 22,000 children have no family. The majority of them (almost 60%) are between the ages of 6 and 13, a critical developmental stage for any child.
The majority of children in foster care have been abandoned or abused by their biological families.
It's concerning that nearly 90% of the total number of children in the system (or 20,191 children) have been declared unadoptable.
The legal period for loss of parental rights is six months, which is far too long and a substantial barrier to adoption. Similarly, relatives up to the fourth degree may exercise their parental rights over the child. Identifying these relations requires time, personnel, and material resources from the government, all of which is performed at the expense of children.
To emphasize the magnitude of the issue regarding Romania's adoption system, experts point out that only 21,647 adoptions were approved in Romania between 1990 and 2019, a small number when compared to the number of children who do not have a family.
According to FACIAS data, the number of families wishing to adopt is decreasing, as a result of excessively complicated procedures and, in many cases, insufficiently trained employees. An overwhelming proportion of abandoned infants are "doomed" to remain institutionalized under these circumstances.
The lack of tangible efforts to speed the adoption process and ensure that each kid finds the family they deserve at the appropriate time is an ABUSE.
The extremely low adoption rate of institutionalized children in Romania suggests that the protection system may have structural and functional issues that require immediate attention.
FACIAS aims to alert, sanction, and prevent abuses, according to its mission statement. FACIAS will act in two directions concurrently in the campaign "They too are Romania's children", in accordance with its aim and objectives:
- FACIAS launched an online petition on Saturday, June 1, 2019 to raise awareness regarding the crucial situation in which the institutionalized children find themselves, as well as the formation of a civic action group in their favor. Through this petition, the public will be made aware of the major issues raised by Romania's adoption process, as well as the tragedies that children without families face in our nation.
- FACIAS suggests real legislative amendments in public debate that might considerably improve the adoption process. In this regard, we may point to the elimination of the 6-month period of parental rights loss; the replacement of the law's provision for the identification of relatives up to grade IV with "relatives up to grade III"; and the establishment of extremely explicit criteria for selecting adopters.