Irinka Yovanova (not her real name) and her husband have been trying to become foster parents to a six-year-old girl. Legislative, social and institutional hinderances have kept, so far, success from them, and kept a better life away from the little girl. Irinka recently talked to The Sofia Echo about the situation of trying to become a foster family in Bulgaria.

I’ve hear that you want to take in a child as a foster family. Does this happen in Bulgaria?
It’s something new for Bulgaria. As far as I know, there are only a few such families in Sofia. Maybe there are 100 in all of Bulgaria. As for us, our idea was to adopt, for children to have a chance to be adopted.

We go every month to a children’s social care home outside Sofia. Most of them have parents, either in prison, in psychological care facilities or just absent, and these children stay in the institution and and rot there, and they have no other chances but to be taken in by another family.

And foster care would be a temporary situation for the children?
There are two types of taking-in – professional and volunteer, according to the law. Now, in principle, a lot depends on the court, how long you’ll have the child. It could be for one year, for three, or even until he’s 18 years old.

How did you come to the decision to do this?
In visiting the home, we saw that these children had no other chance, and it’s hard to say when exactly we knew that we should take in this child. And we saw that she couldn’t be adopted, because she has family. So we decided to candidate as a foster family. She’ll be six in September.

We don’t know anything about her, except what comes out randomly. We don’t even know how long she’s been in the house – but at least since she was two or three years old. Her mother left home when she was a baby, and later died. The father got married a second time, and they kept the little girl, but when the new wife had a baby, they decided they didn’t want her. Maybe it was financial reasons...  

That must be very hard for the child. Is there psychological help?
There’s none. Around the time we started the process, the father committed suicide. The child still doesn’t know.

She has a step-mother who does not want her, and then out of nowhere, a grandma appeared, who, until now, had no interest in her, never made an appearance, but after the father’s death, she started to appear from time to time. From what I understand, she’s in a bad financial situation herself, living in misery.

That’s a big problem for us, because she does not agree that the child should go to a foster family. She doesn’t want to take her, she doesn’t want a foster family, she wants her to stay in the institution.

How does society look at this?
It’s a big problem in Bulgaria, because people don’t know what a foster family is. Even though a psychologist explains what it is to the surviving family. Many prejudices. In general, it’s not viewed very positively. Normally, the only people who adopt are people who cannot have their own children. People think that adopted children are always bad people when they grow up, and that they have a lot of problems.

For foster families, I don’t have specifics, but it seems the situation is the same. It is always thought that children in homes for orphans are prone to illness and in poor health as a result of something bad.

Unfortunately, Bulgaria is one of the top places for adoptions to fall through, where people then reject the child that they have adopted.

How did the idea of foster families enter Bulgaria?
Maybe from the European Union, and all their families that give foster care. As I see it, nothing has happened to this moment in terms of information (in Bulgaria).

When did you decide to do this?
We submitted documents in March 2007, after having decided sometime in December 2006.

I’ve heard you’ve had some problems. What is the situation?
According to the law, we don’t have the right to chose the child. Despite there being cases of people choosing the child because of deep ties with the child. But in principle, you don’t have a choice. I don’t know. From one side, it could be good, but it should all be done with a social worker. There shouldn’t be such stringent laws.
If you already have two children, the child needs to get along with the whole family. We’ve been going to this home for four years – and the children know us, have confidence in us.

That’s one of the hindrances. There’s no evaluation of the concrete situation.

The social workers don’t provide support. When a family goes and says that it wants to be a foster family, they should be happy that someone want to do that, to help them, but the truth is that it’s completely the opposite. They act like we’re a bother to them. You feel very alone in the process. And if you don’t have a good motivation, you’ll very easily give up.

What about paperwork?
You have to fill out a huge amount of documents by yourself. You don’t get these documents from one institute in Bulgaria, but from about 10. It’s going here and there, paying a lot of money – we’ve paid more than 100 leva just for the documents themselves. The state provides no help with this.

Then there’s a long wait. We waited more than three weeks for one of the documents. Then you submit them, then you go back to pick them up, them you go and take all the documents to the social welfare office. Then, you wait for the social worker to contact you, which doesn’t happen, so you call them.

As I’ve noticed, social workers do a lot of stuff – almost too many tasks. It’s hard for them to manage all the things they do. The entire system is not in order. There should be social workers who only work with adoptions and foster families.

So we wait and wait, and at the end, they call, and you start the meetings with the social worker, then most importantly, a type of education for us that is done at some institutions. It’s about what you’re going to be doing – the good and the bad sides of what you’re doing. And they also evaluate you, and write evaluative reports on our participation. It’s helpful.

This takes a lot of time – how do you manage?
My husband is self-employed, and I’m at home with the two children (aged eight and five). So we can get out.

Is there support from other foster families?
I personally know two such families. They’re both believers – that’s why we know each other. A foundation recently contacted me, a German one (called Priyateli 2006). The idea is to help the process and to take advantage of German experience. It’s still at the very beginning for the foundation.

Our friends support us, but I think that Bulgaria needs living examples like us, to see that it’s not so strange.

Is there state financial support?
There is some some, but I’m not sure. I think there is, for about 80 or 100 leva a month. I know there is for professional foster. The social services themselves need such funding, complain about that.

There’s not adequate support. And there’s no co-ordination among the social service centres in a certain region, city, borough. As a whole, things are very mixed up.

What about the future of your family’s efforts?
It’s a big problem, because we can do nothing more. According to the law, the child should come to us despite the grandma, but the question is whether this will happen.

They’re very influenced by the opinion of the family. And the child stays in the social care home, and has a family only on paper.

I don’t know if the law has changed, but I think that there has been a change in the period of time if the family doesn’t care for the child (s/he can be considered available for adoption or foster care), that the period has been reduced.

Some of these child are in the homes for years, because someone might come and see the child once every two years. The children would have the chance to be in foster families, or to be adopted.

Most of the children are just normal.

What is the condition of these homes?
The earliest homes (for birth to three years) are the best in terms of care and personnel. Her home has no specialised staff. Many of the children do not have basic skills, like catching a ball, crawling, but they’re normal – just no one has cared for them. They cannot develop like normal children.

In the homes for older children (three to seven years, and seven to 18 years), it’s completely horrid.

We’re worried because so much time is passing, and she’ll be in a new home when she’s seven. We’ll probably have to take this to court, and then when we hopefully get her, it could be only for three years, because the grandma currently is working, and she can’t care for her. The grandma already lives in a very bad condition, and when she retires, nothing will improve. The girl will be much worse off than with us, where she’d have a family, a mum and dad, where she could receive an education and live in good conditions. And then she’d have to go live with the grandma in bad conditions. We don’t want to eliminate the grandma from her life, but don’t think it’s best for her to live with her permanently.

We don’t know when this will end.

What do your children think of taking the little girl in as a foster sister?
They want her to come to us, and are prepared to fight the negative opinions of others at school. When we go together to the institute where she lives, they all play together. They love her.

I think that Bulgarians are frightened of taking responsibility. When a child here is born with some health problem, like Down’s syndrome, while still at the hospital, doctors often advise the parents to leave the child, to give it up and send it to an orphanage. It’s horrible.

The state does not even help these families, and the families are confused. In Bulgaria, it’s shameful to have a child with a disability. And it’s hard to care for this child. Children’s homes are full of children with sick and with healthy children without home.

We’ve been writing and talking about this for years, and nothing has changed. For thousands of children, life is a nightmare.