Preventing Child Abandonment Through Residency in the Maternal Centre – Longitudinal Case Studies

The following study presents an ethno-methodological approach of the lives of mother-child couples that are at risk of abandonment. In Romania abandonment continues to be the extreme form of parental negligence, representing a rudimentary way of solving the “problem” of unwanted or unaccepted children due to cultural or economical reason. The maternal centres from Romania have been established as an additional deinstitutionalization measures, alternative care and prevention of separating the child from his family, and it aids at keeping the mother-child couples together. The target group, composed of mother-child couples, ex-residents of the Maternal Centre, was evaluated in three stages: at the beginning and at the end of the Maternal Centre residency, and also in 2014, at 8 to 11 years after leaving the Centre. The purpose of the evaluation was to see if the Maternal Centre has fulfilled its mission of preventing child abandonment, as well as to analyze the relationship between the mother and the child many years after the Maternal Centre residency. The premise that we started from was a simple observation that most mothers that were about to abandon their child, or leave him/her in the care of placement centres, chose to assume the role of the parent and were actively and responsibly involved in this role, after they have been helped and advised, including in the sense of facilitating the development of parental attachment.



Keywords: children abandon, Maternal Centre, social work counselling, life course, Romania