The Christian Center "Mother and Baby"

MISSION

The mission of this center is to prevent the children’s abandonment, to support the mothers in specific ways adequate to each situation so that they will be able to keep their children, and starts from the idea that a woman who wants to keep her children shouldn’t have to abandon them.

LOCATION

The Christian Center “Mother And Baby” is on Somesu Rece Street (no number) in Gilau, Cluj County. The Center is located in a building with eight bedrooms, four bathrooms, a laundry room, kitchen and dining room, club, tailoring workshop, office and counseling room.

BENEFICIARIES

The Center has the capacity to host 25 clients and at the moment hosts 12 mothers and 18 children.
Our programme admits women who have given or are about to give birth and are in a crisis situation (a crisis that could result in the child’s abandonment) generated most probably by: conflict with the parents, the refusal of the child’s father to admit the paternity of the child and his responsibility as a parent, the lack of a place to live or of adequate conditions to live, a modest financial situation or, more dramatically, different combinations of all these reasons. Cases are referred to us by maternity homes, pediatric hospitals, colleagues that work in the social protection system in other NGOs and especially by the County’s General Administration for Child’s Rights Protection Cluj.

Along with the reasons mentioned above, mothers will be admitted to the Center considering also their motivation to keep the child, the children’s ages (a maximum of 6 years) and the proximity to Cluj County of the social network of the mother. Mothers with children in care or mothers suffering from chronic contagious diseases or severe psychiatric disturbance are excluded from our program.

PROGRAMME DESCRIPTION

The services of the Center are directed towards the child (preventing him/her from being put into care), the mother (supporting her so that she could overcome the crisis and rejoin the community along with her child), the extended family (mediating in conflicts in order to achieve family harmony and to use its resources in the best way), community (mediating in the family’s relationships at the community level).

The activities that take place in the Center are focused on different levels:

educational (facilitating the access to knowledge and/or developing abilities to raise the child and also personal hygiene, family planning, professional integration etc),
socio-relational (developing abilities to relate within the Center, with the family and community outside, mediating in relations with different institutions etc),
administrative (up keeping in the limits provided by the context of our institution)

Besides these services, through our program we also have the possibility of supporting the mothers within the community (usually financial or material support) so that they could overcome the crisis period.

Our program includes also the majority of the families (mother-child) that leave the maternity home for social reintegration. In order to prevent a new crisis situation, we proceed to support and monitor the cases for the period of time that follows after leaving the Center.

Since the inauguration of the Center 20 mothers and their 30 children have benefited from our services. 5 of these 20 mothers (and their 8 children) are presently still in the Center, the other 15 being back in the community for the purpose of social reintegration.

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