June 2023 Update
Time to celebrate all that RICF has achieved!
We recently concluded our review of the projects we support, assessing the level of need of current project participants, ongoing value for money of these projects, the local economic landscape etc. Having weighed up the various options, the trustees have agreed mutually with FICR that it is the right time to close. The consensus is that RICF has achieved what it set out to achieve almost 30 years ago, as the Romanian child protection authorities now fulfil their role in a very different way compared to in the 1990s when RICF’s work first began. Back then, many children were living on the streets, and thousands were cared for in massive, under-resourced orphanages; foster care was essentially non-existent. Now Romania is a well-established member state of the European Union, children are no longer found living on the streets, the large orphanages have closed, and foster care is mainstream. Also the standard of living in Romania has increased and the minimum wage and benefits provided by the Romanian state to those in need have improved substantially. This means that recently, the mums enrolling in FICR’s maternity project are substantially less likely to abandon their babies than those who joined the project when it first started.
We would like to take this opportunity to celebrate what has been achieved, and we are so grateful to our donors who have given so sacrificially and over such a long time period to allow us to complete this work, and many, many lives have been transformed as a result. We have supported 121 babies and their mothers through the abandonment prevention project since it was started in 2009. We have taught these mums parenting and budgeting skills, provided advice and support to help them access safe work, escape domestic abuse and keep them safe from trafficking. We have provided them with crucial financial and moral support at a difficult time to enable them to continue caring for their child / children rather than having to put them into state care. We were able to extend this support where families were experiencing financial hardship, for example during the covid-19 pandemic. We have facilitated group meetings where lasting friendships have formed. The first children to be supported through this project are now 14 years old, and we are so grateful to have had the opportunity to invest in their lives and wellbeing at a vulnerable time, enabling them to stay with their birth families.
If we think back to the different children's homes supported by RICF from 1996 through until 2008, in different locations around Bucharest, there must be around 100 children, if not more, who we have cared for in residential settings, who had the benefit of being cared for in much smaller more family-like settings than the state orphanages available at the time. We ensured pastoral support and care, and made sure that children were able to be children and have fun. We ensured children were enrolled in schools and supported them to achieve their academic potential. We provided a carpentry workshop so that children could develop woodwork skills and discover their creativity. We prepared young people for independent living, teaching them self care skills, budgeting and supporting them as they transitioned into employment or higher education.
We recruited and trained foster carers at a time when provision of foster care in Romania was in its infancy, and supported children in their transition from residential care to foster care, and saw them flourish in this new setting, overseeing these foster placements until the children reached adulthood. We then helped these young people in their transition to independent living.
We sought out living relatives for the children in our care, and where there was a relative who was suitable, willing and able to look after the child, we facilitated this family reintegration. In two cases we purchased houses for children in our care, for them to live in with their families. This was motivated by our value that poverty should not be a reason for separating loving families. These houses have been truly life-transforming for the families concerned, and it is such a joy to see young people we supported decades ago now raising their own families with their spouses / partners in these spaces. We were also able to purchase a house at the outskirts of Bucharest for a large family experiencing poverty, to allow them to live together.
Other achievements include providing training (alongside SFAC) for state foster carers, and supporting foster carers in their long term placements, to enable them to provide the best possible environment for the children and young people in their care. We hosted social work students in practical placements, and were able to demonstrate our core values and principles. We were delighted to have Emilia join our team following her student placement. We have provided food, medications and second-hand clothes for families that we support, most recently providing all the families enrolled in our projects with essential supplies through our covid hardship appeal. We were also delighted to offer a safe refuge for as long as it was needed, for four different families fleeing the war in Ukraine.
Because much of our investment has been in people, it is difficult to measure the benefits, as these are ongoing. For example, let's consider a family raising their children in their own house, with the grandmother also living in the household. This is very different from the situation where the mother (now grandmother) was sleeping on a mat under the stairs in a block of flats (in exchange for keeping the block clean) and felt this was no place for her then 10-year-old son to sleep, so took him to the state authorities who referred him on to FICR. It is hard to compare the current situation with what might have been for that family without our intervention.
There is so much to celebrate, and we would love to hear your best memories of RICF as well! Do get in touch!
Practicalities for ending well..
From May 2023 the trustees reduced the monthly donation to FICR from £3,200 to £2,500, having depleted financial reserves. We would be grateful if donors make their July donation their last. All of RICF’s funds will be transferred to FICR prior to RICF’s closure. FICR will wrap up its projects and activities over the next couple of months.
The trustees are working with the FICR board and FICR HQ team to ensure that FICR ends well, ensuring guardianship arrangements are in place for the one child whose foster carer is currently employed by FICR, ensuring that our current beneficiaries do not face financial hardship, and ensuring that the FICR HQ team are supported through the process of closure.
For our maternity project we have agreed that each project participant will receive any outstanding allowance that they might have been expecting for their remaining months in the project, so no one faces unexpected financial difficulty due to FICR's closure. We will also ensure that the toys and books recently purchased for the toy library and board book library are distributed between these families and other families in need.
We are delighted to hear that the foster carers plan to continue to meet together each month, and that they have appointed a group leader from within the group to facilitate and organise this. We expect they will meet in public places like parks or coffee shops. We will provide a small budget towards the first 12 months of these meetings going forwards and Ovidiu and Emilia have offered to keep attending them for the next 2-3 meetings during the transition period.
The trustees would like to express their gratitude to all those who have been involved in any capacity supporting RICF’s work; former trustees, current and former staff in Romania, volunteers and visitors, who have given so generously of their time and expertise, those who have donated or arranged fundraising events, and those who have supported our work through prayer. We are so grateful that you have all journeyed with us in this. Thank you for your loyalty and faithfulness, and your generosity towards RICF. It has been a privilege and a humbling experience to be entrusted with the task of putting your resources to work in Romania, providing loving families for abandoned and orphaned children, and preventing abandonment of newborns by working with vulnerable families. RICF has made a difference in the lives of so many children, young people and families. We could never have done this without you.
God bless,
Suzie