A Year of “Day-Care Centres: Together for Children” Project

The Social Protection Service of Cluj-Napoca Local Council benefits from EU funding through 2004-2006 Phare programme – Economic and Social Cohesion / Social Services Component – of 166,610 EUR. The financed project, Day-Care Centres: Together for Children , run in partnership with the Romanian Foundation for Children, Community and Family, started a year ago and has a total duration of 18 months.

The overall project goal is to provide specialised social care to socially and economically disadvantaged families from the town of Cluj-Napoca . It also aims at strengthening the partnership between public institutions and NGO's by providing social services to shared beneficiaries.

The project activities are carried out at the community centres of the Romanian Foundation for Children, Community and Family , operating as day-care centres: the “EveryChild” Community Centre located at No 4 Ilie Macelaru Street; the Community Centre located at No 33 Dumbrava Rosie Street. The centres use multi-disciplinary teams made of: centre coordinator, social workers (3 for each centre), psychologist, educational psychologist, legal advisor, general practitioner, primary school teacher, tutors and administrative staff. The beneficiaries of these services are either guided to the centres by the Social Protection Service of Cluj-Napoca Local Council or they contact FRCCF on their own.

The project targets a number of 300 families living in poverty and having lots of children. Up to now, 200 families have been selected and the project practitioners have drafted service plans for them based on social care, legal, psychological or medical counselling. Since the beginning of the project, approximately 100 children have been accessed the community centre services each month to benefit from different kinds of counselling (psychological, medical, school and educational), from socialization and personal development activities as well as other educational programmes. Moreover, the children receive a daily snack, and those who live far from the community centres – bus tickets. In order to ease up children's access, the centres are now open 6 days a week, Monday to Saturday.

To make sure project goals are reached, an activity evaluation process takes place every six months, consisting of focus groups and interviews with the children and their parents. The evaluation run at the end of January 2008 revealed the following: the children like the fact that they learn good manners at the centre ("Let's Behave Better!"), that they receive homework support and that they have made new friends. They also liked the going-outs, especially the one to the Museum of Art . Still, like all children, they don't really appreciate the fact that they have to obey the rules of the community centre (like for example not using the cell phone while there).

As to the rest of the project, the children would like to go on trips, to play more, to use the computer more often, to sing and dance, to draw and watch more movies.

The parents are pleased that their children have a safe alternative that keeps them away from streets and their dangers, that they are supervised, that they come home with their homework done, that the social workers "are kind and are interested in them" and that the psychologist's work is efficient. Moreover, they are proud that their opinion matters and would like more parents meetings to be held.

The project partners intend to set up a joint database with all social service providers from Cluj and their beneficiaries. Thus, monthly meetings are held with 8-10 public institutions and NGO's from Cluj.