In every small family home we visited we were met by cheers smiles and a

In every small family home we visited we were met by cheers, smiles and a dozen friendly arms pulling us upstairs to show us their own rooms and beds.What is so marvellous is that lots of families, seeing the improvements their children have made, have started to visit them again Sometimes the children go home for good At last, they have found people who love them. Monica was tied up for many years, doubled over with her feet behind her head and arms across her chest. She’s stopped self-harming, her body has straightened out and she’s starting to walk.Doctors had given up on some orphans, but now many are walking for the first time They can feed, dress and go to the toilet themselves. Now she beams, she’s stopped chewing and she shows almost no aggressive behaviour. Then there is Lia, who arrived in her family home very aggressive and addicted to chewing cigarette ends, with a permanently furious expression.

These are children who, without intervention, would have stayed in the orphanages until they were 18 and then been placed in a gruesome old people’s home to die.Certainly, it is extraordinarily moving seeing children such as Mitrut, blind and confined to a cot for 17 years but now, at 18, able to walk for the first time in his life. They have their own toys and clothes, and they’re given mirrors (which were forbidden in the orphanages) to give them an idea of who they are, helping to boost their sense of self-respect. And yet, after six months living in a small family home, their lives are totally transformed.”There are now 50 such homes in Romania started by Hope and Homes The staff ratio is about one adult to four children. “And it’s true; you see some of these children and you feel there’s nothing you can do. The directors and staff of the institutions, worried about their jobs, bitterly oppose any change, saying that the children will be worse off, and that nothing can be done.

“They say that children are like vegetables, not worth helping,” says Stefan Darabus, Hope and Homes’ director for Romania. Freedom can be an overwhelming discovery.”What makes things so difficult for Hope and Homes is that when it tries to close these orphanages and place the children into families or small family homes, its workers are often met with fierce resistance. “Take away normal interaction with adults,” says Mark, “and they simply can’t develop, either emotionally or physically They have no choices at all They are told when to sleep, when to eat, what to wear. They indulge often in obsessive masturbation, aggression or tantrums. Because of their severe conditions, rocking and self-harming is common. The children have no idea of trust, no imagination and no moral sense.

They ate like animals, ripped off all their clothes and destroyed everything they could see.Care professionals from Europe who are quite used to children with special needs in their own countries are shocked by the state of children in Romania. For those who are handicapped, incarceration and the lack of treatment have made them far, far worse than they need be. When they were occasionally let out to play, they had no idea what to do; they spent their time crying, rocking, hitting or biting themselves until they bled – or hitting each other. “And what else?” “Water.” “Anything else?” “Water.”In the notorious Camin Spital orphanage in Sighet, it was so cold in winter that the children couldn’t put their feet on the icy floor-tiles – they had no shoes – and had to sit on chairs, hunched up, hands inside T-shirts, rocking their shaven heads wretchedly, with nothing else to do. “What was the best thing about leaving the orphanage?” one orphan was asked when she was rehoused “Water,” she said. In the Girdani institution, an orphanage only recently closed by Hope and Homes, there was very little drinking water, even when the temperature rose to 35C.