Serving children and families in three cities throughout Romania through emergency care, family preservation, and family restoration.

Bethany's primary goal in Romania is to develop a continuum of social services for children and families in need. Since 1991, Bethany has developed social services like prevention of abandonment, family reunification, foster care, and adoption for permanency planning for children. Each child deserves a loving family; that is why Bethany's program in Romania is looking at ways of supporting biological, foster, or adoptive families to raise children in their homes.

Many Romanian families are very poor because they receive little help from the government, these families need your support. With your help, the needy children of Romania can avoid being placed in an institution, can return home to their parents, can live in a loving foster family, or can be adopted.

Bethany has several programs impacted by sponsorship in Romania
(in Timisoara, lasi and Constanta):

Prevention of Abandonment
Since 1991, Bethany's social workers are working with needy families to prevent children from being placed in institutions and are supporting biological families to care for their children. Bethany's social workers are working in maternity hospitals and medical institutions where children are at risk of being abandoned.

Family Reunification
Bethany believes that each child should be raised by his or her family. Considerable efforts are being made to enable needy families to resolve their problems. Once the problems are resolved and the family is functional, we are happy to reunite children with their family.

Foster Care
Many of the children cannot be reunited with their families, and some of them need temporary care until reunification is possible. To respond to this need, Bethany developed a foster care project where children at risk of being abandoned or institutionalized are placed with loving foster families. These families continue to rely on Bethany's support to survive the harsh economic conditions and be able to properly care for these children.

Domestic Adoption
Domestic adoption is a new concept in Romania. Bethany is actively working to recruit and train adoptive families and place institutionalized or abandoned children in their care. Unfortunately, the government is not supporting these families, and many times, without your support, these placements will never occur.

Youth Project
The main goal of this project is to offer youth who will "age out" of orphanages a comprehensive training program to realize a harmonious transition into the community. Services that Bethany will provide include: life skills training, educational and vocational training, mentoring services, independent living skills, job placement services, etc. In addition, Bethany will contact a number of professionals from state or private placement centers to continue providing services to these youth as well as involve the community in addressing their needs.