An examination of the views of young people in the Romanian residential care system regarding their relationship with biological family members and the option of reintegration
ABSTRACTThis paper reports findings from research conducted in six Romanian residential care homes. The aim of the paper is to examine the views held by young people, currently living in residential care, about the importance of their biological families and the option and challenge of reintegration. The data reflect the ideas and perspectives of 44 young people captured through a narrative interview approach using social mapping activities. The results indicate that most children and young people know at least one birth parent and maintain contact on their own initiative; most do not place a high level of importance on such relationships which are generally characterised by lack of confide…
Wandering lives: a case study of ethnic and cultural selfidentification discourses of two adult cross-cultural kids from a family of Transylvanian Saxons
Abstract The paper presents a case study of two adult crosscultural kids (ACCK’s) from a family of Saxons that emigrated from Romania during communist period. They had what we call a wandering life before resettling as adults in Romania. The objective of the paper is to present and analyse how the ethnic and cultural selfidentification discourse of the two is constructed and its modulations between a primordial stance and a contextual one.
Battered Women: Victims or Survivors?
AbstractFrom 1970, research into women’s responses to marital violence became much more intense than ever before. Academic literature emphasizes two explanatory perspectives: of the woman as passive victim and of the woman who uses strategies to protect herself. The main goals of this study were to explore the effectiveness of personal strategies that women use to survive violence, the factors that influence the recurrence of violence, and the demand for shelter and the role of shelters in the process of recovery and healing. We interviewed eight battered women, from rural areas, all of whom had taken refuge in shelters, some of them several time. We identified a number of psychopathologica…
An Introduction to Maltreatment of Institutionalized Children
This chapter serves as an introduction to the concept of maltreatment of children and provides a very brief overview of published research that has been pivotal in the development of defining and describing this concept. First, we provide an understanding of how maltreatment has been defined historically and how definitions have changed over time, leading to current definitions used by researchers and child welfare organizations. Maltreatment is also described within the context of trauma and sociocultural issues that are associated with it. We also provide a brief review of the consequences of various types of childhood maltreatment on biological, psychological, academic, and social functi…
Immigration, Transition to Parenthood, and Parenting
This chapter adopts a life-course perspective to show how transitioning to parenthood and parenting practices are negotiated and adjusted under the influence of both migrants’ childhoods and migration contexts. The method used for data collection was life-story interviews. For purposes of this study, were selected nine participants, exclusively women. Some mechanisms of parenting formation and transformation were identified by using both inductive and deductive procedures for data analyses. These methods elicited novel information on how women change during migrations with respect to child-rearing and familial patterns. The empirical data suggest that self-change in the case of young migran…
Challenging dominant representations of residential childcare in Romania: an exploration of the views of children and young people living in the care system
This study explores perceptions of risk commonly shared by children and young people living in care system in Romania. The original data, reported here, were gathered through direct interviews with children and young people living in public and private care. In undertaking the research, the authors wanted to challenge dominant, largely media created, representations of the care system in Romania. The aim was to explore the real risks that young people face arising out of their daily experiences. Research data were gathered using a narrative interview approach. Specific forms of risk are identified including: risks arising out of peer and staff relationships, care system policy and practice,…
Romanian adoptive families: Stressors, coping strategies and resources
Abstract This study was undertaken to describe the stressors that the Romanian adoptive families confront with, during the different stages of their life cycle, the coping strategies that they adopt and the resources needed and available to them to respond to these stressors. It was used a purposive sample, composed of nine mothers that have adopted children between five months and five years old. The technique used for the data collection was the narrative interview. The main emergent themes in the interviews have been: the desire to have a child and the infertility; the adoption procedure; the uncertainty regarding the moment of placement; the instant adoption of the parental role-status;…