Grandparents and grandchildren: impact of migration in Moldova. HAI/UNICEF project findings and recommendations

The economic collapse in Moldova caused by the long transition period from central planning to a market based economy has led to poverty and high migration of labour force. Moldova is now the poorest country in Europe with an economy still recovering from the break up of the former Soviet Union.

Every third Moldovan able to work has left the country to find employment oversees. The situation created by migrant Moldovans back home is the number of children left behind by parents growing up in extended families of grandparents or relatives, or placed in institutions.

This paper is based on a short-term HAI/UNICEF project: “Building capacity of volunteer networks to support older people caring for grandchildren to prevent institutionalization and reintegrate children with their families” implemented in two regions of Moldova

The parents’ migration to work oversees has both positive and negative effects on the children left back home. The main positive effects are related to the welfare of the children (remittances mean better living conditions, mobile phone, computer, spending holidays abroad with their parents etc.), in cases where parents have found a job and have maintained contacts with the family.

Among the negative effects of parents’ migration, the authors find:

• consequences on the psychological level: frequency of depression symptoms for children, feeling of separation, loneliness
• older people have the burden of bringing up children and doing the household work with no additional support and allocations
• intergenerational gap appears in the communication of grandparents with their grandchildren

Conclusions and recommendations include:

• children left behind by migrant parents should be considered at risk and given priority in state policy
• in terms of emotional effects on children living without parents, there is a lack of psychologists in schools and communities. The social assistant in the community is not necessarily a specialist in the field of child protection and sometimes misses or does not have the capacity to cover the large number of people in need
• older person headed families have limited financial resources and often live in poor conditions (no heating, running water, sanitation, food) so that the children have limited access to clothes, school supplies, food
• the reasons why older carers decide to put children in institutional care are primarily scarce financial resources, state of health and the need to work
• social services should be put in place for children whose parents are abroad and for older carers bringing up these children. These should include special counselling, support in educational process, facilities for spare time, home visits, community centres etc.
• the state should develop flexible financing mechanisms for social services and support to civil society organisations to complement the social protection system and improve community services rather than residential care
• the state should consider older people as an important resource for child care and provide special entitlements and support at community level. Volunteers can cover the information gap and undertake home visits for counselling and support purposes- investing a little money in supporting volunteer networks can help to resolve key social issues
• as older people play an important role in caring for children of migrant parents, especially women, special attention must be given to social integration of vulnerable older people, improved access to information and social services, revision of social pensions, stimulation though special entitlements and support at community level
• the Government should work towards social policies based on the successful models developed for older people headed families caring for grandchildren