Infant House, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia © EveryChild / Onnik Krikorian 2005

Just as I was starting to wonder what I’d be doing before the parliamentary elections are upon us, some good news. It might be that I’ll be returning to Georgia in the near future to do more work on social vulnerability there. Last time I was in Tbilisi I was looking at the Yezidi community, and in the autumn of 2005, photographing in Tbilisi, Kaspi and Rustavi for the London-based international children’s charity, EveryChild.

EveryChild is an international development charity, fighting to protect some of the world’s most vulnerable children.

We work with children who are separated from their family or community, and with those who are at risk of separation. We believe all children have the right to grow up in a safe and loving family environment, with a secure future.

Hopefully, this work will come to fruition and from the sound of things it should be right up my street. Social vulnerability and how it manifests itself in terms of the institutionalization of children from poor families, or those with disabilities, has been a common theme of my work in Armenia. Interestingly, there are quite a few similarities and differences in terms of how both republics deal with the problem.

For example, in Armenia the focus has been on renovating and improving conditions in State-run institutions whereas in Georgia the focus has been on re-integration and fostering. That’s becoming the case here too, but not to the extent that it is in Georgia. In part, I think this has been because of the Diaspora’s obsession with supporting institutions rather than addressing the root cause for abandonment which is poverty.

More than 10,000 children in Armenia are currently enrolled into special schools with as many as forty percent staying on full board. Studies show that this reliance has led to the emergence of an “underclass of children marked by poverty, stigmatization and a lack of proper care and education who are likely to lack opportunity as adults.”

[…]

Yet, despite the common misconception that most children placed into residential care in Armenia are abandoned, few actually are. According to Naira Avetisyan, UNICEF’s Child Protection Officer, at least seventy percent of children enrolled have families they could return to if socio-economic conditions improved.

Many children instead come from single-parent households where the mother is divorced, widowed or separated from a husband working abroad or in prison.

[…]

“Even if you create excellent conditions in the institution, when the children leave this artificial environment they have no life skills or the capacity to deal with daily problems,” Avetisyan says. “For example, studies show that as a result, many of these children end up in conflict with the law and some girls become prostitutes and are more prone to trafficking.”

[…]

“The problem of children in institutions is probably one of the most important issues to address as it violates the most basic rights of the child — to grow up in a family environment,” she concludes. “The majority of children in boarding schools and children’s homes are not orphans.

They have parents and the right to live with their families. Nothing can replace the importance of that environment — not even the best institution.”

Anyway, other models are the preferred choice for Armenia too, and the Government still plans to close down most of Armenia’s Soviet-era boarding schools. A fostering pilot programme has apparently been started in Gavar with EveryChild’s involvement. The way fostering works for children with disabilities was very interesting given my personal multi-year project at the Kharberd Specialized Children’s Home.

Although there are new projects such as Warm Hearth, Bridge of Hope, and Prkutyun, they’re not really the same as The First Step center in Tbilisi which is taking on many of the children from the Kaspi Orphanage for Children with Special Needs. That really was quite impressive. Probably both republics have a lot to offer to each other in the area of child protection, with some projects in Georgia needed here, and vice-versa.

For sure, the policy of deinstitutionalization in Georgia appears to be working, and not least because there are half as many children enrolled in institutions there as in Armenia even despite its larger population. The Georgian Times reported on the programme in November.

Natia, Ia and Tatia Revilshvili, aged 14, 13 and 10 respectively, live in Georgia’s western province of Imereti. The three have just come to know how it feels to live together with a brother, a father, a grandmother and most importantly, a caring and supportive mother. This would never have happened without the Georgian government’s Deinstitutionalization, Family Support and Foster Care project, which began in 1999.

In a country where half of the population lives below the poverty level, taking care of one’s own children is a luxury for many people. After a decade of struggling with the legacy of the Soviet Union, child abandonment remains one of Georgia’s most acute problems. According to statistics, 430,000 children in Georgia come from poor families, with seventy percent of them suffering from malnutrition. Ninety-five percent of abandoned children are social orphans, with at least one parent who abandoned them because of social hardship. Children without parental care are housed in poorly financed orphanages, which receive with their scant finances from the government’s central budget. The picture can be even gloomier: disabled children from impoverished families are typically placed in hospitals.

In an effort to staunch this appalling trend, in July 1999 Georgia’s Parliament adopted the law ‘On Foster Care of Orphans and Children Deprived of Parental Care.’ Enforcement of this law was assigned to the Ministry of Education. The same year, in partnership with UNICEF and the international NGO Every Child, the Ministry of Education launched a project titled “Deinstitutionalization, Family Support and Foster Care” in the eastern cities of Tbilisi, Rustavi and Telavi. In 2002, the project started in the western cities of Kutaisi and Batumi.

The deinstitutionalization project takes children out of orphanages, boarding houses, and medical institutions and places them back with their own families or with foster families. “The state will spend 15 times less [money backing this project] than it would supporting the above-mentioned institutions,” said Maia Kurtsikidze, UNICEF Communications Officer.

[…]

Zina Revishvili, a grandmother of three sisters who recently found a new home in their biological father’s house thanks to the deinstitutionalization project, has seen the positive effects of her family’s reintegration. “Yesterday evening, my son was sitting on a sofa and the girls came to him and started chatting and hugging,” she said. “I was most happy to see them together.”

[…]

The stories of the Revishvilis and the Kikndzes are similar to hundreds of other success stories of the deinstitutionalization project. They highlight the underlying idea of the project, which is that for children, as perhaps for all of us, “there is no place like home.”

Incidentally, when I was there for EveryChild last time, I photographed at the Infant House and Shelter for Vulnerable Mothers and Children in Tbilisi, the Rustavi Orphanage, and out in the field with social workers from the Georgian Ministry of Education. Some of those photographs from that visit to Georgia for EveryChild are available on this blog here, while some of my Armenia work is here, here, and here.

Anyway, wish me well. Would be great to get back to Georgia again with a specific task and objective in mind. Would even be nice to blog the work as it’s done as well. Let’s see.

Orphanage for Orphans and Children Deprived of Parental Care, Rustavi, Republic of Georgia © EveryChild / Onnik Krikorian 2005

Infant House, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia © EveryChild / Onnik Krikorian 2005