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Although child abandonment in hospitals is regulated by several laws, we still hear in the Romanian media about the cases of newborn children who remain in the hospital and are cared for by volunteers. The official data offered by the National Authority for Protection of Children’s Rights and Adoption (ANPDCA) show that every year there is a number of children who are not being discharged after birth. With that fact in mind, I conducted a targeted qualitative research on this category of niche beneficiaries in order to provide information coming from practitioners in the field, who see this phenomenon and who are managing these cases. The study presents the results of semi-structured interviews with 15 professionals from 13 counties from Romania that are working in the health field; the main objective was to identify the reasons for prolonged hospitalization of children abandoned at birth.The intention of this study is to better understand the phenomenon and to generate new information that can help to change the current procedures or to create new programs or projects focused on preventing this issue.A general conclusion of this study is that those children who are not being discharged have health related issues and they can’t get discharged until the feedback received from the physician who supervise them that they are healthy enough. Another essential finding of this study is the need to pay more attention to minor girls in situations at risk, because they were the main category of mothers who have a higher risk of abandoning their child at birth.
Keywords: child abandonment, abandonment in hospital, abandonment at birth, social workers in hospitals
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