MOGILINO
MOGILINO
MOGILINO
Three Steps Forward, One Step Back by Yana DOMUSCHIEVA Even with my first text on Mogilino, I promised that this time, society’s response to the fate of institutionalised children with disabilities will not amount to clicking tongues, fretting, and general abuse addressed to the government. On the contrary, the growing pressure on responsible ministries is obvious and coming from more than one source and people with no direct interest. While the Bulgarian Mothers Movement, together with the Adopted Children and Adoptive Parents enterprise, and an enterprise committee of parents of children with disabilities are working on amendments in several laws, the BHC researcher Slavka Kukova and a group of strong organisations (including UNICEF, Karin Dom, For Our Children) are negotiating the admittance of external experts to the home to carry out individual assessments of the children’s condition. Kate Blewett will show her film and speak at the Red House on 6 November, and before that, on 1 November, she is organising a meeting with the Londoners who founded the Mogilino Children’s Trust. Facebook has gathered more than 700 Bulgarians and foreigners willing to help or at least monitor activities, while there are more than 4,000 indignant signatures on the Bulgarian mothers’ petition. A number of popular bloggers wrote about the children, while Yulian Popov went a few steps further by organising a series of charity meetings of Bulgarian organisations in England. No one said it would be easy. The British rehabilitators who Slavka Kukova took to the home in Mogilino to train the personnel on how to take care of the children were not admitted inside. The principal blocked the front door with the words, “I cannot trust Brits”. She would only allow them to train the staff “in theory” in the local school. The team had to go back with all the equipment and food they had brought for the children. Slavka Kukova, however, is expecting a group who will work with the children to be allowed into the home by 10 November. The Social Assistance Agency (SAA) is going to accept the proposals of the active group of NGOs for evaluation of the children’s needs and exploring the opportunities for their transferral to Ruse, Slavka told OBEKTIV. The other good news is that the Angel Kanchev school in Ruse, where 94 out of 400 children have some disabilities, has expressed a readiness to not only accept the Mogilino children but also to send its teachers for professional exchange in England. To describe the meeting between the Bulgarian Mothers Movement, the adoptive and biological parents of children with disabilities on the one side, and the counsellors to Minister Maslarova on the other would 1 OBEKTIV
require the use of military jargon. In short, the mothers won the battle but only after a heavy attack on the part of the experienced army of Minister Maslarova. “I was very scared by the introductory words of the head of cabinet for the Minister... I had never heard such words, so pompous, and so precisely fired in a matter of seconds, aiming to engage the target and defeat it instantly, so that it surrenders and gives up arguing”, said Nadezhda Vasileva, who attended the meeting as a parent of a child with disabilities. However, Donka Doneva, the head of cabinet for the Social Minister, did not manage to scare the parent group and agreed for the MLSP to co-ordinate the efforts for legislative changes with the Ministries of Health, Justice, and Social Policy aimed at the improvement of the quality of life of institutionalised children and the prevention of abandonment. In order to avoid children with disabilities being sent to remote and deserted villages and places, it should be possible for them to be cared for in their home environment. Currently, families of children with disabilities have to put up with humiliation in administrative departments and poverty at home. Therefore, the demand is that the care administered by these parents is recognised as an occupation and paid for from the state budget. From the Ministries of Education and Health parents require access to education and rehabilitation throughout the country, as opposed to the current opportunities in Sofia and a few other larger towns only. The civil enterprise “Adoptive Parents and Adopted Children” has insisted that the adoption procedure is shortened and streamlined. One of their central proposals concerns shortening the institutional stay to 3 months, and initiating the procedure for deprivation of parental rights of the biological parents immediately following the expiration of this term. In support of every child’s right to live with a family, the Bulgarian Mothers Movement has proposed the introduction of a fee for staying in a children’s home, to be paid by the parent/s. The above are only a selection of the large number of proposals made by these three groups to the Ministries. Many people share their views - from ordinary housewives to famous writers. The online forums have seen the origin of a number of small initiatives aimed at helping institutionalised children. Don’t let these culminate yet again in boxes full of essentials such as fruit, pampers, and vitamins which only help the Government pretend children in these homes live well. Let them culminate in pressure on the Government, in energy for change in our outlook and attitude toward abandoned children in Bulgaria.