Infant House, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia © Onnik Krikorian / NKTA 2007

As mentioned in the last post, I’ve just returned from Georgia where I was documenting social workers working for the Ministry of Education and Science in the country’s second largest city, Kutaisi. The work was arranged through the British charity EveryChild and undertaken for the Newport Kutaisi Association (NKTA) who brought many of those social workers to the UK last year on a study visit.

The idea for this training visit came when Newport Kutaisi Association’s vice chair, Catherine Philpott and treasurer Sonia Fisher made a visit to Kutaisi last year. They saw at first hand the conditions in the orphanages and the pilot scheme that has been established to improve the status of children’s welfare. It is estimated that in Georgia there are 4,000 children and young adults living in 50 or so soviet style state institutions which lack basic necessities for a decent life. Catherine & Sonia travelled under the auspices of EveryChild, a British Aid Agency working mainly in Eastern Europe with a base in Georgia. EveryChild are consultants to the Georgian government and both are very committed to raising the standards of child welfare.

It is hoped that this exchange will be the beginning of a partnership in social work between Newport & Kutaisi where ideas, skills and friendship will become another aspect of the work of the Newport Kutaisi Association.

Anyway, as two social workers had to visit Tbilisi yesterday to enrol on the TACIS Tempus certification programme for such work, I tagged along to take some pics before returning to Armenia today. This was especially interesting as certified social work in Georgia is apparently something new and unlike in Armenia where most social workers are employed by international organizations or local NGOs, they work for the state there.

A British-led project set to modernise social services in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia will welcome the country’s ‘founding mothers’ of social work to Sheffield Hallam University this week. The University is leading a programme to establish social work education in the country and award those who have existing skills.

Georgia currently has no social work education or training and only seven qualified social workers. The all-female qualified team are battling to meet the needs of a population of more than three million adapting to a democratic society, so the need to develop social work education is high.

[…]

Tbilisi State University will be training social workers at undergraduate and postgraduate levels and the curriculum is being devised with cultural traditions and differences in mind. To plug the skills gap before the students qualify, the work and expertise of those already working in social work type roles will be recognised with a certificate. This certificate course has already begun, with forty mature students. It is hoped that these successful students will provide placements for the students on the four year social work course which begins in September 2006.

Given that I was in the Georgian capital, I also took the opportunity to make a return visit to the Tbilisi Infant House where most of the country’s abandoned babies and toddlers end up to get some supporting contextual shots for the NKTA work. Anyway, IWPR reported on reform of the adoption law and the Tbilisi Infant House in January.

Salome Chichinadze, senior specialist in the department, says that every day more than twenty people come to the department to complain they have received no reply to their adoption applications. She blamed this on the 1997 law on adoption, which she said was “very inflexible and unworkable”.

Under the current adoption law, three years must pass before abandoned children are eligible for adoption and their parents have the right to block the adoption, even if they do not look after them.

[…]

This is set to change in a new draft law, which has already gone through a first reading in parliament and should be on the statute book by the spring.

Under the proposed legislation, a maximum period of a year is set after which a child in this situation must be made available for adoption.

And the bill aims to streamline the adoption process for children that have been completely abandoned by their parents to three months.

“In a word, the new law is focused on protecting the interests of a child,” said Chichinadze. “Nowadays the state gives priority not to parents, but to children, who have all the rights, both civil and social.”

Although the article reported on some shortcomings in its implementation, it was interesting to note that the institution seemed emptier than it did when I last visited in 2005. In contrast, the Nork Children’s Home in Yerevan continues to accommodate larger numbers of abandoned babies than its equivalent in Georgia.

This is because the focus is still on supporting institutions in Armenia rather than on reintegrating abandoned children with their biological families are finding local adopting or foster families although the declared policy is for this situation to change. Anyway, as I’ve only just returned I haven’t had time to go through all the pics from the Tbilisi Infant House let alone Kutaisi itself, but some are included with this post.

Some colour shots taken for EveryChild at the Tbilisi Infant House in 2005 are available here. It’s also interesting to note that there are over twice as many children placed in state-run institutions in Armenia than in Georgia.

Infant House, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia © Onnik Krikorian / NKTA 2007