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

CHAPTER I
Fear and anxiety are specific problems for the elderly who are beneficiaries
of residential care institutions. The study’s results prove that the institutionalized
elderly fear:
- Beneficiaries with mental issues: “There are a lot of madmen here,
and I mean it… We live in fear. And you can see that during the day a
lot of rooms are closed. People are afraid, and after dinner all the doors
are locked. People live in fear because of these madmen” (FG_E_3_urban_asylum);
- Employees’ alcohol abuse: “The biggest issue that we have is the alcohol,
both the administration and the employees drink too much”
(FG_3_urban_asylum);
- Beneficiaries’ insecurity: “I can tell you a story that happened here two
months ago. A beneficiary was not offered any help and the poor guy
burned and died two days later. There are 200 persons in here and during
our last meeting, nobody asked the administration about punishing anyone.
But they talked about the reason... We wanted to know why the staff
didn’t provide this poor guy with any help” (FG_E_3_urban_asylum).
Another emotional problem the elderly with children abroad have is the fear
of definitive separation from their children, that their children will never
come back. One of the experts in elderly care mentioned that “they fear they
will be forgotten, their children will leave and will not return, even children
fear that their mothers will leave and will never return back home”. Because
in our culture the idea that “children should support their parents when
they get old” is strongly emphasized, there are cases when the separation
from the children causes the sense of loss. When children leave home on a
long-term basis, the weakening and/or loss of any contact with their own
children implies the transition from a predefined status – “I have children
who would take care of me when I’m old” – to an ambiguous and unknown
one – “I don’t know anything about my children” and “what I’ll do when
I’m old”. The unknown scares and it is heightened by discussions with other
community persons who tell them stories about their own children who disappeared.
The fact that labour migrant children do not contact their parents
for a long period of time causes negative representations in the elderly regarding
their children. Anxiety, fear and their long wait for any communication
from their migrant children conditions the feeling of loneliness, stigmatization
and isolation: “There are cases when parents simply disappear abroad
and grandparents take care of their grandchildren as they would take care of
their children and there are two grandmothers who find themselves in the same
situation – they take care of their grandchildren, the grandmother takes care of
her granddaughter – she stands for both a mother and a father for her. I know
a story about a labour migrant mother, she left her two kids in 1999, and in
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