How the Romanian child protection system responds to child abuse and neglect in marginalized Roma communities

Objectives The presentation aims at providing a review of specificities of reporting, assessment and intervention of child abuse and neglect situations  in a few marginalized Roma communities from Romania.  We were... [ view full abstract ]

Objectives

The presentation aims at providing a review of specificities of reporting, assessment and intervention of child abuse and neglect situations  in a few marginalized Roma communities from Romania.  We were interested to find out and present what situations are reported, what  assessment tools are applied, what kind of interventions are carried out, how is institutional cooperation in practice and how parents perceive the intervention of the child protection system.

Method

We conducted interviews with 14 professionals who work on cases of abuse and neglect in public social services,  child protection services and in NGO-s and 12 parents who  had been the beneficiaries of  child protection interventions.

Results

There is a need for inter-institutional  collaboration, and there are some initiatives for integration of services  with various service providers present in the community, but there is no systemic and integrative approach between different sectors and cooperation levels, The lack of assessment and intervention tools and the need to have a good collaboration with the family and the community were expressed by most of the specialists as well as the lack of  trainings regarding the work in these communities. As regards families, parents appreciated good relationship, understanding of their multiple needs and availability of workers. Disappointments were mainly related to lack of proper information, which could have sometimes even tragic consequences, lack of understanding the specificities of their situation and authoritative and distant attitude.

Consequences

Although there are some good practice examples,  the insufficient professionalization of case work and community work, the lack of connections between services and needs are still characteristics of the Romanian child protection system. Besides developing more community based services, the development of culturally specific assessment and intervention instruments and trainings are imperatively needed.