‘Home Alone’: Romanian Children Left By Migrant Parents

Freedom of movement within the European Union has brought huge benefits to its citizens - and especially to the citizens of former Communist regimes that restricted people's travel rights for decades.

About 620,000 Romanians, equal to 3 per cent of the country's total population, left Romania for other countries between 2015 and 2017 alone, according to the National Institute of Statistics, INE.

But this mass migration has inflicted collateral damage on the children of parents who have gone abroad in search of work in richer countries, experts warn.

Tens of thousands of children in Romania have been growing up for years without at least one parent who has emigrated to Western Europe - a process that got underway even before the EU scrapped visa requirements on Romanians when the country joined the EU in 2007.

"When their parents leave, children are emotionally vulnerable and develop a feeling of abandonment that makes them feel as if they are parentless," says Anca Stamin, who coordinates a program put in place by the charity Save the Children to alleviate the problem.

A group of "Home Alone" children take part in a Save the Children summer camp in Sinaia, Romania. Photo: BIRN

Launched in 2010, the program runs 17 centres throughout Romania attending to the needs of "Home Alone" children - as those left in charge of uncles, grandparents or single mothers or fathers are styled in Romania.

Every day after school, psychologists, social workers and other specialized staff at the centres help these children with their homework and daily troubles.

They also offer emotional counseling and enable some of them to call their parents abroad from their computers.

"The feeling of abandonment can be accentuated by the...