In recent years foster care in Bulgaria has managed with some effort to make its way as an alternative care for children abandoned by their families. In 2009, foster parents from the country created the National Foster Care Association to support the progress of this type of social service and to help solve the problem of taking children out of institutional care. Currently it has about 200 member families. Its main designation is to give emotional support to people dedicated to this cause. However, lately the association decided to create a Vocational training center for foster parents. "Training and support of foster families is well developed in Sofia, in contrast to small towns, where it is lacking," said Miroslav Dolapchiev, President of the Association in an interview for Radio Bulgaria. According to the Agency for Social there are about 2,000 foster families in the country at the present moment. The number of children raised by this type of social service is approximately the same. It turns out that there are more than 300 certified foster families in the coutry that do not have children placed with them. Most of these are in the town of Shumen, and in the provinces of Pazardzhik, Pleven and Varna. The reason for this is poor foster care planning. "In recent years in the development of foster care as a form of employment. This leads to a shortage of children and too many approved foster parents", explains Miroslav Dolapchiev and adds:

"There are places where foster care is stimulated in a very different way. There the needs of children in the community are analyzed and foster parents are “created” and certified according to them. Instead of constantly approving new foster families these municipalities only trains the type of foster parents it needs."

In cities like Shumen and Targovishte, where the level of unemployment is high, people see foster care as an opportunity to make money, whereas in Sofia the number of those willing to volunteer is higher. However, Sofia residents tend to make so-called long-term commitment toward one or more children with greater difficulty. "We work hard, we are focused on our careers, our lives are very dynamic and we are always in a hurry. We need more people who realize that to take care of a child makes a lot more sense than building a career," says Miroslav. Besides poor planning, another problem is the lack of a unified financial standard for foster care. Currently, the state grants a monthly financial child support of only about 195 BGN for raising a child in a foster family and the wage of professional foster parents is 390 BGN. According to Miroslav time will gradually eliminate candidates whose motivation is financial because "in foster care you give more than you expect to receive".

Is foster parenting a job or a vocation?

"I can not declare with certainty. I see it rather as a public duty - he said. - It is not a job because I am a volunteer foster parent. The state doesn’t pay to people like me. Sofia is the city with the greatest number of volunteer foster parents. My family had been trying to find a way to help children for years. Like many volunteers we would visit them in social homes,  but little by little we realised that it was a lost cause, because we were not changing the life of a single child. Thanks to friends from Foundation For Our Children who told us about foster care and how a person can help the child and change their life directly, my wife and I decided that we could do it. It is not that hard to have another child in the family. Of course, children from institutions bring many challenges with them but one can handle it."

Besides caring for their own daughter, Miroslav and his wife have been taking care of a little girl abandoned by her biological parents for three and a half years. She came to their home when she was only 11 months old. "I have seen children with far greater needs than hers. The difference comes from the fact she had not been in institutional care and was raised in a Family-Type Placement Center a.k.a. "Little House" in Boyana, where professionals had taken care of her during the first months of her life," says the young man.

"There are many challenges, but after seeing the sweeping change of the child and seeing how you influence them, they become insignificant – insists Miroslav. If you are responsible only to yourself and to God for the welfare of your own child, for the child from an institution you are responsible to the state, their biological parents and the NGO sector, which supports and participates in the process. One of the tasks I found difficult in the beginning was that, though we do not do this for our own children, we must keep a very strict diary of the foster child’s development. This is done, because when they continue on their life’s journey, they go together with their story. You need to know, for example, what the diseases of the child are, how much time he/she has spent in your house, how he/she advanced, what his/her educational and emotional needs are. This is a challenge, if only for the fact that you need to spend time thinking about these things. The younger the children are, the smaller the problems are because they have spent less time in the institution. But if this child has been in the orphanage, even for just one year, the time you need to spend helping them to acquire even the most basic skills such as using utensils, keeping personal hygiene, putting on shoes etc. can sometimes take years. So when you look at the challenges you say that is not so hard because you see results and know that you have given this child a chance, that he or she wouldn’t have had if raised in an institution."

Miroslav and his wife carefully preserve the history of the little girl to pass it on to her future adoptive parents or her biological parents if they take her back into their own custody. But aren’t they afraid of the separation?

"Separation is something that every foster parent eventually faces - says Miroslav. - But no matter how much preparation you have gone through it is not clear how you will manage when you face it. I avoid thinking about it. As a foster parent I am prepared that one day it will happen. Of course, we will survive. More important is what will happen to the child, how she will survive this separation. Our job is to help her to understand that this separation is not because we don’t love want her. It is important that the child realizes that he or she was loved here and will be loved wherever he/she goes. I do not know how we will explain it. I just pray that it will be easier for her. "

 The publication is from Radio Bulgaria