Bulgaria and Romania inherited similar child protection systems from their communist past and had to address similar challenges in reforming their systems on their road to the EU accession. Romania ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1990, and Bulgaria did also ratified it in 1991. However the situation in both countries was far from responding to the UNCRC requirements as there was no legal framework related to protection of children’s rights, nor adequate capacity among state structures to work with children at risk. Both countries were confronted with very high rates of children separated from their biological families and placed in large residential care institutions, as institutionalised care was the only type of child protection service available in both countries. According to a census carried out in Romania in 1997 (at the beginning of the reform process), 98,872 children were living in 653 residential facilities nationwide. This represented approximately 1.7 percent of the total population of children between the ages of 0-18. In Bulgaria, at the beginning of the reform process (in 2000) the percentage of institutionalized children was among the highest in Europe, at 1.78 percent, with over 35,000 children being placed in public institutions.
This document aims to give a brief outline of the main steps taken by Bulgaria and by Romania in their struggle to reform the national child protection systems. The experience accumulated between the two countries, both in terms of similarities and differences (in terms of approach and level of success) may constitute an important basis of debate and inspiration/ learning for other countries in the region that are sharing similar post-communist heritage and are currently considering ways of approaching their own child protection reforms.
