Dear Family and Friends,
I am so excited to share with you that baby Maria is recovering wonderfully and, as soon as we find a foster family, the hospital will release her. Alina has done an AMAZING job with her as has Mihaela, our other hospital worker. We thank our friends in Texas who sent $200 for Alina personally for all her efforts in caring for Maria. Alina was very touched when I told her. It is an honor to be in Romania to serve and support the nationals who are so obviously anointed by The Lord for the work we do. We wouldn’t want to be here without them!
I visited Alina and Maria again today and I thought you would enjoy a series of photos since Maria came into the hospital. I hope this doesn’t overload your inbox!
Maria the day after I wrote the first email update
First smile Alina was able to capture
Proof that candy is good for you 
Escape to the park with Alina after ten days
Baby Maria today
Alina and Maria today
Maria is still having trouble with meal time because she experienced intense starvation for so long. She cries when it is all gone and Alina continues to assure her there will be more. She has her feeding frenzy moments when she seems desperate for more even after she has already eaten two jars of baby food. Alina and Mihaela continue to supplement her meals throughout the day. Many thanks to those of you who sent funds specifically for Marias care. She has promptly eaten your donations!
There are several of us ministries in the Oradea area that are trying to push legal action with Marias case because the nurses at the hospital allowed Marias biological father to visit one night after Alina went home. We were all so upset that I thought we were going to organize a Christian posse to go after him. One ministry sent their employee last Thursday to the local child protection department to get a copy of the medical report so she could push the case with the police in Marias village. They refused to give the report stating it was their job, not a private organizations. (Mind you, more than two weeks had passed and they still had not done anything). The other ministry took their photos and went to the police anyway who sent them onto the local court prosecutor. Because of their legal system, no one will be charged until after a judge reviews the case and then only if he feels there is substantial evidence. It can apparently take a while for this to happen so we wait and pray. In the mean time, I am focused on finding a Christian foster home to move Maria into so we dont have to worry about more visits from her biological family. Please pray for this to happen very quickly!
Because God is good and bigger than we can imagine, I was able to go to Brussels with a Romanian friend, Corina Caba, who runs a ministry much like ours. The people organizing presentations for the meeting wanted to hear from Romanians and Corina has a tremendous fear of public speaking and did not want to go. She is definitely a creditable witness because she is a licensed social worker, has finished law school, and runs her own foundation facilitating domestic adoptions. We met several days before the meeting and agreed that she would go if I would come with her and help her prepare her presentation. Our friends from Texas, once again, poured out their generosity and funded by trip to Brussels. Although Corina was not given long to present, (she was told she would have 10 minutes but they ran out of time and she only got 3 minutes) she did an EXCELLENT job. Many other organizations did get time to present compelling cases of children who were abused or stuck in a temporary home. But, for us, the most important part of the meeting was after it ended. We were able to talk directly to the European Union Parliamentarians and explain details of certain cases. I was able to give Miracle Marias case study to one of the members who promised to personally intervene. We got email addresses of everyone and we have since followed-up once already. Corina and I also were able to talk with a Romanian Senator about allowing us to present before the Human Rights Committee of Romanian. We were both stunned that such a thing existed. Additionally, we met with a Romanian parliament member who initially threatened Corina but when Corina started spouting off facts and the reality, she backed down and said she would like to hear from Corina via email regarding facts of cases. YAY!!!!
I am trying to establish a group of ministries such as our to present before this Human Rights Committee in addition to inquiring about a class action lawsuit against the National Authorities on Child Protection for laws that strip children of their right to be protected. This is a longer, more complicated issue and I have cut and pasted Corinas written statement from the meeting for those of you who would like to understand it better. It will be at the end of this email update.
We desperately seek your prayers for Miracle Marias case. For those of you not familiar with this case, Miracle Maria is a child our ministry took to the USA almost six years ago for surgery to remove a giant tumor protruding from between her eyes. She has continued to have a massive amount of cranio-facial surgery in addition to multiple other therapies for numerous health issues. Since her initial operation, she has been in the physical custody of a family from the Charleston, SC who have taken incredible care of Maria. They have been trying to adopt her the entire time she has been in the USA but, because Romania closed international adoptions, they were unable to finalize it. Now, because of medical visa issues, the Department of Homeland security started the deportation process for Maria. The Chandlers have been forced to hire an immigration attorney to fight this case. Please, please pray for The Lord to quickly resolve this and to meet the Chandlers financial needs for this court battle.
Thank you a thousand times over for your prayers and support. We will continue to send you updates on Maria as things develop. This has been a HUGE lesson in forgiveness for me. I hope I never forget it!
Basking In The Son,
Michelle
Corina Cabas written statement for the hearing in Brussels on April 25, 2006
My name is Corina Caba and I am Romanian working as a licensed social worker in Oradea, Romania. I have attended law school as well. I have worked in child protection for 10 years now and I founded House of Hope in 1996. House of Hope is a transitional home for abandoned children with the goals of:
- helping children recover from the damage of institutionalization, neglect or abuse
- finding a permanent family for each child from House of Hope
House of Hope also facilitates foster care, domestic adoptions, and biological family reintegration. House of House also has a center for social and material assistance for birth families to prevent child abandonment. I am also the adoptive mother of four beautiful children.I believe the new child welfare legislation is theoretically very good but it does not address the reality in Romania. It does not take into consideration the excessive number of children abandoned in the hospitals.
I would like to explain the most common situation we see in our practice. To begin, a baby is abandoned after birth at our local maternity hospital. The new law, 272, Article 60, states that a child under two years of age cannot be placed in a residential facility. They must be placed in the extended biological family or substitute family such as foster care. Because the hospitals are not considered institutions in Romania, the baby can be moved to a different hospital where he will wait until a foster home can be found. So the baby is moved to another hospital or to a different section of a hospital. Many times, the child has to wait in hospitals for over a year. This gives priority to hospital care over private, residential family type care. Hospitals in Romania are in a deplorable state because of the financial crisis of health care in Romania. This has resulted in children suffering from a lack of nutrition, stimulation, and love. Fortunately, in our city, many private NGOs give assistance to our local childrens hospital. Still the abandoned baby is forced to wait, loosing his most important developmental first years.
According to law 272, Article 54, line 3, when a foster family is found for the baby, the social worker is required to find biological parents and extended family to the 4th degree. The social worker must request ALL MEMBERS give consent for the foster placement or any decision regarding the childs well-being, even if they abandoned the child and never inquired about him or her. It is absurd to give so many rights to parents who clearly have no concern for their child.
Another aspect of failed child welfare is the forced reintegration of abandoned children in the hospitals. Because of overcrowding, the hospital will send children back to their biological parents in ambulances without even checking the conditions of the home. In most cases, the ambulance returns to the hospital with the children because the biological parents refuse to take the child. Even if the biological parents refuse many times, the social worker is still required to get the written consent for the foster placement or adoption.
In many cases, the biological parents will not cooperate and give consent for the child to be in a foster family because they hope to somehow profit financially. If they are not contacted, most of the time, they never return to visit the child or inquire of the child. When the biological family realizes they will not profit financially, they can retaliate by reclaiming their child. I see many cases where the biological parents are total strangers to the child yet they still have the right to reclaim the child until the child is 18 years of age.
I would like to present a recent case in my area. I will start with a little history of the child, Mary. Mary was abandoned after birth in a maternity hospital and then transferred to a hospital in Oradea where there are currently approximately 80 abandoned children, mostly babies. (I want to make a note here: This is similar to the situation in the hospital in 1990. Before this new legislation was enacted in January, 2005, the situation in the hospital was much better because private residential family type care was allowed for babies and many NGOs were forced to close their private facilities under the new law. Additionally, because international adoption was closed, the fostered children are now stuck in foster families because they cannot be adopted.) Getting back to the case of baby Mary, she was more fortunate than other babies in the hospital because she was cared for by a private NGO worker who works in that hospital. The worker, Alina, developed a deep attachment with the baby and that is why she developed completely normally. When the baby was 14 months old, the biological mother came one day and abruptly took Mary home. The mother needed no approval to do so because biological parents have the right to abandon and reclaim their children at will, regardless of how long the child has been abandoned. This clearly demonstrates the biological parents rights are priority over the rights of the children. Children are treated like property that can be reclaimed and the parents whim.
Five months later, Mary was found lying in a ditch by the road. The person who found her was an ambulance driver who immediately rushed her to the hospital because her vital signs were critical. When she arrived at the hospital, she was malnourished, beaten severely, burned all over with cigarettes, and terribly swollen. The forensic doctor immediately contacted the child protection and filed a report. The baby is now recovering slowly but still remains psychologically and emotionally traumatized. This could have been prevented with proper laws that do not give so many rights to irresponsible and abusive parents. Irresponsibility is so obvious in cases of abandonment. Irresponsible parents should not have the same rights as responsible parents.
Conversely, the same law does not protect the confidentiality of a birth mother wishing to release her child for adoption before she gives birth, especially in cases where the birth mother has been sexually abused. She has no choice because the law requires for the extended family to be informed and their written consent given, even if an extended family member is the abuser.
Also, the law does not contain any stipulation to confidentially protect the identity of the adoptive parents from the biological parents.
The process for making a child available for domestic adoptions is very difficult and time consuming. The social worker is required to start all over again, after the placement was done, with getting the written consent of biological parents and extended family up to the 4th degree. Additionally, counseling services must be offered to the biological parents even if they have never seen the child or inquired about the childs well-being for years. According to law 273/2004, article 23, if the child is not adopted within one year of the courts decision, the process must start from the beginning as if the child was never adoptable before. Law 273/2004, article 12, line 2, and law 272/2004, article 62, line 3 states that even if parents have their parental rights terminated and are jailed for child abuse, they must still give written consent for their child to be adopted. If they refuse, the decision is left to the court to decide. Additionally, even if the biological parents give the written consent, they must still appear before a judge for the court to decide if the child is adoptable. Too many child welfare decisions are left to the decision of the court. The problem is, most of the time, the court is not prepared for making decisions concerning child protection in Romania.
The new legislation does not foresee a realistic conclusion for the majority of children who need protection. This is what the law stipulates:
1. Reintegration from the birth family to placement in the extended birth family. In most cases, it is not possible or it harms the interest of the child. In my experience, it has more negative effects on the child than positive in most of the cases.
2. Substitute families =96 there are not enough families to meet the needs of all abandoned children. Especially if the foster families are caring for children that cannot be adopted in Romania (such as many ethnic Roma children).
3. Adoption =96 The reality is that is my county Bihor, and probably not only my county, approximately 85% of the abandoned children are ethnic Roma. Unfortunately, most families interested in adoption will not adopt an ethnic Roma child because of prejudice in Romania.
What are the solutions the new legislation offers?
The only real solution is a substitute family, such as foster care, which should not be considered a final solution because it is not permanent and there are too few to cover the need.
The new legislation does not consider that the majority of the abandoned children in our country are ethnic Roma and this makes them difficult to be adopted domestically. And law 273/2004, article 39, restricts international adoptions to the absurd by allowing only grandparents of the child who have residency outside the country to adopt. Why not the aunt or uncle who is younger than the grandparents? This restriction prevents children who desperately need a permanent family from ever having one. I do agree that international adoptions should be the last solution for a permanent family and should conform to standards to exclude profit or other abuses. But, it is definitely not fair for the children who urgently need a permanent family to be refused this right because of a legal restriction with political implications.
I have never facilitated international adoptions and I do not intend to in the future because I want to focus on domestic adoptions as I have done until this point.
Again, the new legislation regarding child protection does not correspond to the reality of the actual situation in the area of child protection in our country. Already many hospitals are overflowing with abandoned children that are waiting. In conclusion, we should consider a very important fact: children cant wait
Basking in the Son,
Michelle
Posted on May 2nd, 2006 by Michelle
Filed under: Michelle's Journal