CHILD PROTECTION

Today, austere state-run institutions are home for more than 1.3 million children in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.  These children, orphaned, abandoned at birth or sometimes removed from their families because of a mental or physical disability, are hidden away in facilities that rarely even meet their most basic needs and inhibit their mental and physical development. 

Children have the potential to make enormous progress when given the chance to live in a caring family environment that provides them with the love, stability and education they need to become happy, self reliant adults.

ARK’s aim is to reduce the number of children living in, and entering, institutional care through the closure of institutions across Eastern Europe, and the development of alternative services including prevention work, foster and adoptive care, and Small Group Homes where small groups of children live together like a family.

ARK has supported the closure of 13 institutions across Eastern Europe (in Romania, Belarus, Bulgaria) ensuring over 1,700 children live in loving family environments. By the end of 2009 a further 13 will be closed in these countries as well as in Bosnia, Moldova and Ukraine.