specific needs of children and elderly left behind as a ... - IOM Moldova

CHAPTER II
school administration and teachers’ board and sometimes the school
principals also keep the record: “the school principal is acquainted with
the situation and wants the teachers to also be acquainted with the real
situation of children, whose parents are abroad. I don’t speak about other
high schools, but in our high school the principal knows in person the children
left behind. When I was working in school, the deputy principal was
appointed to monitor this situation; there is always someone who monitors
the situation” (FG_EC_urban). A vulnerable aspect in this regard is the
validity of collected data: “at a certain age the child can feel ashamed of
the fact that he is left alone, that is why he can say that both parents are not
employed but are at home...how can we find the real situation? The most
truthful information we can get is when the child is in kindergarten, but
growing up they feel shame to tell for example that their parents divorced or
migrated abroad; ...my sister is also divorced but in the class register, in her
case, both parents are included” (FG_EC_urban). Quite often the information
has to be taken from a number of sources and compared to find
out the real situation: “we apply another kind of census, the mayoralty has
its own, but when working out vaccination plans we are acquainted with
the information in general” (FG_EC_rural).
At the end of the year 2009-2010, children underwent a medical examination
within medical institutions including those children left behind as a
consequence of migration: “firstly we have identified the families, made the
list of children and after that they were examined” (IIA_EC_3). If the child
is identified with a disease, he is supervised but if they are healthy we do
not keep a record of them anymore. The medical personnel has not set as
its priority to visit all the children at home: “Do you think it is the duty of
the doctor to visit them? He pays them visits anytime it is about a disease.
In what other cases should he do this?” (IIA_EC_3), the experts from the
Ministry of Health wanted to know.
One of the most important issues is insufficient monitoring and registration
of cases of departure abroad, because parents do not inform the
authorities about their decision to migrate, thus the child is not placed
in guardianship: “if parents inform authorities of their intention to go
abroad then it would be possible to place the child in guardianship but as
the majority of them migrate illegally, the situation can not be monitored”
(FG_EC_urban). A good practice in the municipality of Chisinau was
conducting a small “census” of children left behind as a consequence of
migration in the summer of 2010, involving employees of the Municipal
Directorate for Child Rights Protection: “we have collaborated with high
schools, we had the lists, we paid visits to the households and we have identified
cases” (FG_EC_urban). As a result, the Directorate operates a database
of children whose parents are abroad, that facilitates the work with
these children. At present in some rural localities the social assistants
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