In her post for the Huffington Post blog, Gillian Huebner, U.S. Director of Policy and Advocacy at Lumos, presents the story of Dumitrita, a 14-year-old Moldovan child who was placed in a residential institution at the age of seven because “there was no chance for someone with disabilities like hers to attend a mainstream school.” The article describes the negative impacts of institutionalization on children and how, “despite all available scientific evidence, the numbers of institutions are on the rise.”
The article also highlights the advocacy work of Lumos and other organizations to include children deprived of family care in the upcoming UN Sustainable Development Goals and to use the Early Childhood Development Index (ECDI) to measure success in ensuring “quality early-childhood development care, and pre-primary education.”