VIP Brother Charity to Help Prevent Child Abandonment

Left to Right: Maxim Behar, Board Member, Ivanka Shalapatova, Director of the “For Our Children” Foundation, and Stanislava Kaneva, PR of Nova Televizia – the producer of VIP Brother, present the project. Photo by dete.bg

Prevention of child abandonment is one of the seven charitable causes of the Bulgarian edition of the VIP Brother reality show.

The funds will be used to create a National Center for Abandonment Prevention.

Data from the National Statistic Institute shows that nearly 99% of the children placed in the so called homes for medical and social care in Bulgaria have known parents.

The statistics confirm that child abandonment mostly happens over the lack of support to the mother and the child on the part of family and relatives. Separation usually occurs at the maternity hospital as result of a crisis the families cannot deal with.

Bulgaria has 32 homes for babies and toddlers, while 8 019 children younger than 18 live in social homes. There is also the alarming trend for children with disabilities to be abandoned more and more frequently.

In 2007, 1 118 babies shave been abandoned at maternity homes, their number went down to 944 in 2008, while 144 babies have been abandoned just in the first quarter of 2009.

For this reason, the "For Our Children" Foundation focuses its efforts on preventing abandonment immediately after the birth of the child. The Foundation estimates that the care for an abandoned child costs twice more than abandonment prevention.

The National Center for Abandonment Prevention, to be created through the VIP Brother charity, will spread the Foundation's experience in the cities of Sofia, Pleven, Varna and Plovdiv.

Specialists will assist parents at risk and will offer emotional support, teaching of parenting skills, practical help in the newborn's care and representation before social institutions.

The funds will be used for the support of 100 at risk mothers and their babies. The Foundation has also set the goal of finding the first 10 foster parents to raise the children until problems in their biological families are resolved.

In addition, funds will be invested in nursing facilities at bus and railroad stations and major supermarket chains as well as in the remodeling and renovation of several maternity wars.

 

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