Street Children – State Burden or Responsibility? (Part Two)

Street Children – State Burden or Responsibility? (Part Two)

In June 2006, the ‘Children’s Social Adaptation Centre’ was opened in Tbilisi. The aim of the centre was to take care of orphans and street children, integrating them into society. However, the director of the centre was fired within three months after a scandal. The same almost happened with the new director as well. The public thinks that centre is not working for the children and the heads of the organization care only about money. The fact is that state policies do not address the issue of what will happen to street children in the future, proving the doubts people have.

Problems

According to the present director, if the legal status of the centre is not changed, it would be better to close it. “The centre is registered as Ltd company and it is working as a profit oriented organization. That is why we have the problems with donors. Funding is the biggest problem we have. Many donors are interested in giving us money for projects, however when they find out that we are an Ltd, we are not financed. Profitable organizations should pay 50% of their income to the city budget”.

Mamuka Katsarava, the head of City Health Service, says that Ltd status is not barrier for donors. “Of course the legal status of the organization should be changed, however nobody now thinks of the centre as a profitable company. Everyone understands what kind of organization the Children’s Social Adaptation Centre can be and every donor is eager to give them money”. 

Fifty children live in the centre permanently. Those under 18 years old are eligible to live in the centre; however older children still stay there. As the director says, they do not have the right to kick the children out.

Katsarava insists that only children under 18 should be living there. “It is violation of the international convention that children over 18 years are living there. They should know that it may cause the establishment of a criminal environment in the centre”.

Where should the children go? Katsarava’s answer to this question is as follows: “They have families, they have the ability to work. Not a single state takes responsibility for adults. We cannot have a place, where adults of working ability live, it is impossible. We offer them jobs, if they refuse, they can go wherever they want. Almost every child who lives in the centre has a house. The social workers should work with their families as well, something they are not doing. They should prepare the grounds so that children could return to their families. It is difficult to integrate children into their families”.

One more problem that the director talks about is the fact that the centre does not have a curfew. Children are allowed to go anywhere they want, during the day and they often commit crimes. They return to the centre at night. Several days ago, one of pupils of the centre injured guard and was arrested. Things like that happen quite often there.

“If you ask the children, they do not want anything but food and a place to sleep. As it is an open institution, we do not have the right (Article 18 of the Constitution) to restrict one’s freedom, if he is not imprisoned. We do not know if they really go to school or to work from here, or if they are doing the same thing they used to do - like robbery, begging or other crimes. They had bad experiences before. Unfortunately, we cannot control them. That is why we search for them in police stations and hospitals quite often. Sometimes they come to the centre injured. We take them to hospital, from where they escape”.

None of the programmes to help children adapt into society are being implemented in the centre. Kartsava complains about this and thinks that the administration of the centre should be changed. Professional and experienced workers should be hired.

The non-professionalism of the teachers is reflecting on the children. They do not even know how to read and write. Nobody sees a future for the centre or for the children either. “This is a shelter for criminals” – is how the present director, Kobaladze, describes the centre. Because the children do not know how to read or write and have a bad past, schools are not admitting them. That is why teachers work with the children in the centre.

“Either the centre should be closed, or the children should be isolated from the streets. They need a different approach. A filtration service should be established, which will disseminate the children to different places.”

The construction company ‘Axis’ offered children from the centre jobs but the plan did not work out. A large majority of the children refused to work, although ‘Axis’ was paying ten laris a day. As for the girls, they were enrolled in hairdresser’s courses, but they never went.

Because of the above, the director cannot say how many children are eager to change their way of life. Even police officers do not know how to deal with street children, because the state has no strategy or approach for those children.

According to Kobaladze: “The police do not know what kind of rights they have. The territory of the Dighomi market is where the children who are into substance abuse gather. The police know everything, but they do not do anything, because neither begging nor substance abuse is a crime.  The other day, a guard took stolen cell phones from some children. However the police have not punished them, as they did not see the scene of the crime”.

Kartsava does not know if the centre is effective or not. He thinks that the centre does not meet the objectives it was created for. “The centre should not be operating like this. It should receive and disseminate children to different institutions and families. Social workers and psychologists should work with them for one year. Neither me, nor the experts, are in favor of the centre operating in this way”, says Kartsava.

Lia Saralidze, the head of the ‘Public Health and Medicine Development Fund of Georgia (PHDFG)’, talks about serious problems, connected with the street children. She underlines the fact that the state does not have any strategy for this segment of society. Salaridze thinks that the shelter for street children should exist. “We should start working on prevention and public awareness to defeat this disease of society. Street children spend their whole life on the street. Their physical and psychological state is ruined, they have a different mentality. It is impossible to change them in five, seven or ten months, especially when a precise strategy or plan of action does not exist”.

Salaridze thinks that the only way out is creating a state strategy for street children. “We should determine the main objectives of the centre, how and for whom it operates and what and when the results should be. The state should look to the experience of other countries as well. The impression that the state is doing nothing for street children should be changed”.

Eka Gulua