Natia, Ia and Tatia Revilshvili, aged 14, 13 and 10 respectively, live in Georgia's western province of Imereti. The three have just come to know how it feels to live together with a brother, a father, a grandmother and most importantly, a caring and supportive mother. This would never have happened without the Georgian government’s Deinstitutionalization, Family Support and Foster Care project, which began in 1999.
In a country where half of the population lives below the poverty level, taking care of one’s own children is a luxury for many people. After a decade of struggling with the legacy of the Soviet Union, child abandonment remains one of Georgia’s most acute problems. According to statistics, 430,000 children in Georgia come from poor families, with seventy percent of them suffering from malnutrition. Ninety-five percent of abandoned children are social orphans, with at least one parent who abandoned them because of social hardship. Children without parental care are housed in poorly financed orphanages, which receive with their scant finances from the government’s central budget. The picture can be even gloomier: disabled children from impoverished families are typically placed in hospitals.
In an effort to staunch this appalling trend, in July 1999 Georgia’s Parliament adopted the law ‘On Foster Care of Orphans and Children Deprived of Parental Care.’ Enforcement of this law was assigned to the Ministry of Education. The same year, in partnership with UNICEF and the international NGO Every Child, the Ministry of Education launched a project titled “Deinstitutionalization, Family Support and Foster Care” in the eastern cities of Tbilisi, Rustavi and Telavi. In 2002, the project started in the western cities of Kutaisi and Batumi.
The deinstitutionalization project takes children out of orphanages, boarding houses, and medical institutions and places them back with their own families or with foster families. “The state will spend 15 times less [money backing this project] than it would supporting the above-mentioned institutions,” said Maia Kurtsikidze, UNICEF Communications Officer.
Under the deinstitutionalization project, every child’s case is implemented and monitored by a social worker. The social worker must pay regular visits to families in order to provide counseling to children and their parents. (One side benefit of the project has been the introduction social workers – a new class of professionals – in Georgia.) Seventy social workers have been trained, and in the five years since the project began, they have placed 1,200 children back into a family environment or helped to maintain the children’s original family. Between August 1, 2006 and October 1, 2006 alone, workers in the Imereti region recorded 71 cases of the prevention of child abandonment, 37 cases of family reintegration, and 13 cases foster family placement. In total, during the reporting period, 218 children were provided with two critically important things (which some of them had lost already or were about to lose): a home and a family.
Zina Revishvili, a grandmother of three sisters who recently found a new home in their biological father's house thanks to the deinstitutionalization project, has seen the positive effects of her family’s reintegration. "Yesterday evening, my son was sitting on a sofa and the girls came to him and started chatting and hugging,” she said. “I was most happy to see them together.”
These girls—Natia, Ia and Tatia—joined the deinstitutionalization project in 2006. The three sisters, as well as their younger brother Giorgi, had been brought up by Tsitsino Tevzadze (a single mother) until she started to suffer from a serious illness. The children’s father, Davit Revishvili (who had remarried to Neli Trapaidze) sought to take responsibility over the youngest child. In light of her debilitating illness, Tsitsino allowed Giorgi’s removal to his father’s family. In 2004, Tsitsino died. Their maternal grandmother was strongly against the girls having any contact with their father, and so, after the death of their mother, the girls were placed in the Etseri Childrens’ Home. However, after social workers got involved with their case, the grandmother agreed to bring her granddaughters to their father's home. Now the girls are living together with their father, stepmother, grandmother and brother.
Zina Revishvili is thankful for the project, saying "the hardest [things] is left back. Initially, the girls found it quite tough to get along with their father. Social workers have done everything they could to help. Over time, the girls came to feel more at home, and are no longer so irritated at being told off. Neli, their stepmother, has no children of her own. She takes a good care of them, and the girls have never had any problem with her – unlike with their father."
Mzevinar Ghachava, a social worker in Imereti, told GT that recipient families’ most frequent objections to reintegration are in regard to a lack of food at home. "At least they have something to eat there," they say. And in a province has one of the highest poverty indexes in Georgia – 40 percent— this complaint is convincing.
Under the deinstitutionalization project, instead of paying for dozens of children’s centers, the Georgian government pays each biological family 60 GEL per child per month to help pay for food and health care expenses. Foster families receive 125 GEL per child per month. Next year the estimated assistance will be 100 GEL for biological families and 150 for foster families. For disabled children the stipend is higher – 105 GEL this year, with an expected increase to 240 GEL in 2007.
GT visited a family in Kutaisi that had recently formed as a result of the deinstitutionalization project.
Social worker Mzevinar Ghachava spoke to GT about the family’s situation: "After the parents of sisters Natia and Khatia Kirtadze, aged 14 and 10 respectively, decided to break up, Natia remained with her mother and Khatia went with her father’s family. Natia was brought to a specialized boarding school in the village of Gordi. She found it difficult to adapt to the new environment and we started thinking about finding a foster mother for her. Riuzan Sokhadze, who teaches at the school, agreed to fill that role."
Later, once it was learned that Khatia was living under hard conditions with her grandparents, social workers helped her join her sister. Since 2003, the new family of Natia, Khatia and Riuzan has been living together happily. The girls go to Public School # 23 in Kutaisi and their foster mother, along with her 27-year-old daughter Tamar, see to their studies and their health. The girls have also remained in contact with their biological family.
Asked whether her neighbors or coworkers plan to follow her example, Riuzan Sokhadze replied that some at her office would like to become foster guardians but are afraid of possible medical needs of the foster children. "The salary is too low to cover healthcare expenses," Solkhadze said.
Her daughter Tamar continued: "I am a doctor and I am not afraid if girls fall ill, but anyone else would be scared if there was no medical insurance for the children."
When the GT visited Ruizan Sokhadze's foster daughters, however, they did not seem to care much about such concerns. Natia and Khatia were just happy to be hosting us. Before we bade farewell to this cozy family, Ruizan Sokhadze noted: "Natia was my student at school, so we had no difficulty adopting each other. I feel towards her as I do towards my own daughter. This program will end once the girls turn 18 years old, and Tamar and I are very worried about that. I do not think I will be able to let them leave this house."
The stories of the Revishvilis and the Kikndzes are similar to hundreds of other success stories of the deinstitutionalization project. They highlight the underlying idea of the project, which is that for children, as perhaps for all of us, "there is no place like home.”
