The “Help for Romania” project of the Alsterdorf Foundation in Hamburg has been present in Romania, in Bihor County, carrying out activities since 1990. It all began immediately after the fall of the Ceaușescu regime, through work in children’s homes. In the early years we focused on renovating and improving hygiene in homes and hospitals across Bihor County, as well as providing specialist guidance to staff in these institutions.
From the mid-1990s onward, new care structures for people with disabilities and mental illness were implemented step by step, structures modeled on Western European examples. This is how a day center came into being for psychiatric patients who still lived at home with their families, preventing their admission to an institution or psychiatric hospital. For those who had since become adults and still lived in children’s homes, we established, together with the social authorities of the time, three family-type homes for 34 young people and five apartments — protected housing — for another 27 young people, to prepare them for independent living.
Our concepts for assisting and accompanying people with disabilities are based on already-tested European principles.
In the field of employment for people with intellectual and psychiatric disabilities, in 2008 we established, in Oradea, in collaboration with AJOFM Bihor and DGASPC Bihor, a Center for Information, Counselling, Mediation and Workplace Assistance for people with disabilities. Financial support for this project came from the Robert Bosch Foundation in Stuttgart and from the Evangelical Foundation Alsterdorf in Hamburg. In implementing the concept of workplace assistance for people with disabilities, adapted from the “supported employment” model, we had the support of specialists from a service in Hamburg, the Hamburger Arbeitsassistenz. One of the successes of implementing this project in Oradea is the placement of over 500 people with disabilities into regular jobs. Many of them still benefit from workplace assistance services today.
Regarding the improvement of housing conditions and the modernization of home assistance services, our activities have been guided by the “community care” concept, following which, in 2005, together with the social authorities in Bihor, we began integrating people with disabilities — who until recently lived in social institutions — into housing within the community, in various neighborhoods of Oradea.
Today, these homes are part of the Alsterdorf Association’s structure, and here live 43 adults with intellectual and psychiatric disabilities: apartments in Oradea with 4, 5 or 6 places, and two houses with 10 places each in Oradea and Săcueni.
The services offered to people with disabilities have also diversified, taking into account the needs of beneficiaries: leisure organization services, home-based socio-educational assistance services — for those who have left institutions, occupational activity workshops, support services for people with disabilities in accessing employment, and support services for initial or continuing vocational training.
Preparing young people with intellectual and psychiatric disabilities to live an independent life is the major objective of our work. To this end, with financial support from the VELUX Foundations, we are running an education and training project for people with disabilities to help them take the step toward an individual form of housing, outside of institutions.