Day-care Centres: Together for Children Comes to an End

The Social Protection Service of Cluj-Napoca Local Council has benefited from EU funding of 166,610 EUR through the 2004-2006 Phare programme – Economic and Social Cohesion / Social Services Component. The financed project, Day-Care Centres: Together for Children , run in partnership with the Romanian Foundation for Children, Community and Family, has come to an end .

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

The project activities were 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, and 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.

300 families living in poverty and having lots of children were selected for the project and were drafted care plans to receive social care, legal, psychological or medical counselling, etc. Since the beginning of the project, approximately 100 children 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 received a daily snack, and those who live far from the community centres – bus tickets. The centres are open 6 days a week, Monday to Saturday .

The questionnaires that have been filled in and processed so far show that over 90% of the children enrolled in this project improved their school results and school motivation.

The project partners met quarterly to set up a joint database with all social service providers from Cluj and their beneficiaries. The database is being tested right now and it will be available in a month.

The total costs of the Day-Care Centres: Together for Children project were of 212,227 EUR. 78.51% of this amount represents EU funding, while the rest of 14.2% (30,137 EUR) was covered by the Cluj-Napoca Local Council and 7.29% (15,480 EUR) by the Romanian Foundation for Children, Community and Family .

The community centres will continue to be supported by Cluj-Napoca Local Council. Thus, 60,000 RON were already granted for the third quarter of this year for food, transportation, school supplies, consumables and other supplies needed when working with children.