Romani Children at Risk in the Child Protection System in Bulgaria
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Romani Children at Risk
The Roma families and their children are predominant among the Bulgarians who take advantage on social assistance and their access to education, employment, and health is not completely guaranteed. Roma children are overrepresented in the childcare institutions, although no official statistics are available. The researchers on this project, however, visited 15 institutions in which 809 children are housed, 510 of whom are Roma. The main reasons for their institutionalisation are: poverty of their families, lack of stable and sufficient income, low education levels and migration of their parents in search of employment and income, risk housing, lack of social services for Roma children and families in accordance their needs, lack of effective mechanisms for prevention of pregnancy and child abandonment among Romani women. To cope with these problems, the report recommends to the responsible authorities to collect reliable data on Roma children and the reasons for their abandonment in the social institutions.
The full text of the report is available in English at: http://old.bghelsinki.org/resources/BHC-2-11-bg.pdf
