Orphans in Georgia: a new approach

Published on February 25, 2014

TbilisiSociety

She sits in a cor­ner, her eyes fo­cused on the walls. She doesn’t want to talk to any­one. Her boy­ish hair­cut, se­vere pso­ri­a­sis and oc­ca­sional fits of hys­te­ria and neu­ro­sis leave her iso­lated from the rest of the world. Tamari is only 13 years old. She does not know where her mother is and her fa­ther has been ac­cused of mo­lest­ing her. She and her two sis­ters can’t live at home any­more.

Tamari is not the only child in Geor­gia who is un­able to live with her par­ents. Many chil­dren are forced to leave their homes due to poverty, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence or be­cause their par­ents were al­co­holics, faced time in jail or just aban­doned them. Ac­cord­ing to Unicef, 95 per cent of in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized chil­dren in Geor­gia are known as “so­cial or­phans”.

These chil­dren, raised in or­phan­ages, face lit­tle op­por­tu­ni­ties and a life of poverty. More­over, their life in these in­sti­tu­tions leaves them with­out the nec­es­sary skills to find em­ploy­ment, and many find them­selves in­volved in street crime, drug deal­ing, and pros­ti­tu­tion. Over the years, sev­eral re­ports and ar­ti­cles have brought these dire sit­u­a­tions to light. In order to ad­dress these is­sues, the gov­ern­ment part­nered with Unicef to de­velop a new pro­gram that aimed to close down all state or­phan­ages and find these chil­dren new homes. Geor­gia ran about 72 or­phan­ages in 2003, serv­ing about 8, 000 or­phans. Ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics, only three or­phan­ages re­main out of the 49 that op­er­ated in 2005. The gov­ern­ment has made it clear that it wants to erad­i­cate these So­viet-style in­sti­tu­tions.

There­fore, in co­or­di­na­tion with the Min­istry of Labor, Health and So­cial Af­fairs of Geor­gia, the Char­ity Hu­man­i­tar­ian Cen­tre ‘Abk­hazeti’ (CHCA) started a new pro­ject in 2011: small group homes. These homes pro­vide an al­ter­na­tive to tra­di­tional or­phan­ages and fos­ter care. Un­re­lated chil­dren live in a home-like set­ting with ei­ther a set of fos­ter par­ents or a ro­tat­ing staff of trained care­givers. 

The boys and girls re­sid­ing in these homes are be­tween the ages of 6 and 18 and come from a va­ri­ety of eth­nic back­grounds. The homes aim to cre­ate a fam­ily style en­vi­ron­ment for the chil­dren, to sup­port their ed­u­ca­tion and de­vel­op­ment, and to pro­vide them with the pro­fes­sional skills nec­es­sary for an in­de­pen­dent life.

In Geor­gia, there are three mod­els: fam­ily-style homes for a max­i­mum of seven chil­dren, spe­cial­ized homes for a max­i­mum of 10 chil­dren, and SOS type homes that house around seven chil­dren. CHCA runs three homes in the Kakheti re­gion, but in total there are about 50 small group homes in Geor­gia and more than 10 providers: Car­i­tas Geor­gia, Di­vine Child, Child and en­vi­ron­ment, Bres Geor­gia, Bi­liki, SOS, and oth­ers.

After hav­ing lived in CHCA’s Small Group Home for two years, Tamari is a dif­fer­ent child. As she strokes her beau­ti­ful long brown hair, her eyes light up when you talk to her and she shows off her gor­geous smile. CHCA spent a lot of time work­ing to im­prove her psy­cho­log­i­cal state. Her pre­vi­ous ag­gres­sive­ness, neg­a­tive at­ti­tude and reser­va­tions have dis­ap­peared. She is able to speak about her suc­cesses at school and has sev­eral friends with whom she spends time. She is also learn­ing how to sew, and she now has her own sewing ma­chine. For the first time in her life, Tamari sees the fu­ture brightly.

How­ever, these small group homes are a tem­po­rary so­lu­tion. Around eighty per cent of these chil­dren have at least one par­ent who re­tains parental rights but is cur­rently un­able to care for their chil­dren. There­fore, the gov­ern­ment, in co­or­di­na­tion with Unicef and other providers such as CHCA, launched a cam­paign to re­unite these chil­dren with their bi­o­log­i­cal par­ents or rel­a­tives.

As a con­se­quence, Tamari’s life changed dra­mat­i­cally. After hav­ing lived in a small group home for two years, an uncle came for­ward. This last New Year was the first time that Tamari and her sis­ters did not spend in the or­phan­age. In­stead they cel­e­brated with lov­ing rel­a­tives. The girls ap­peared to be the hap­pi­est chil­dren in the world that day.

For Pri­vacy rea­sons the names in the ar­ti­cles have been changed.

Pho­tos cour­te­sey of Onnik James Kriko­rian. The pho­tos do not por­tray CHCAs Small Group Homes, but are a col­lec­tion of vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren in Geor­gia.