Lois Pollock
Lois Pollock is a UK social worker. She is seen in “We’ll Never Meet Childhood Again” facilitating a sex-education workshop for the teenagers at HAR, and over the years has performed a number of workshops on various subjects with both house-parents and children.
I’m Lois Pollock, and I’ve been coming to Romania since 1995. I’m a social worker by profession and also a psychotherapist. I was introduced to Romania by a nurse at St Christopher’s Hospice in London, where I was working at the time. And she had nursed in Romania back in 1991.
She asked me if I could come to Romania initially to do a therapeutic workshop, with the staff at Colentina Infectious Diseases Hospital. I came and did a three-day workshop with Min, which attempted to address some of the educational aspects of children living with HIV and AIDS. I then was asked if I would do a workshop in one of the other infectious diseases hospitals in Bucharest – Victor Babes Hospital - and I did another workshop there in that same first visit.
The workshops in those early days were very much focussed on trying to teach some of the professionals about child development, about ways of communicating with children – some of whom are very sick, and going to die.
The workshops were about helping the staff to understand their own emotional responses to children who had been abandoned, and who were living with a disease that has not been easily accepted in Romania.
On the situation in the mid 1990s
I have to say that I was very shocked by what I saw in Romania, particularly on that first visit. I had not previously been to a former Communist country, and this was a short number of years after Romania had become open and… a supposedly democratic society.
And the impact of thirty-odd years of a dreadful communist regime were in evidence everywhere. The poverty was extremely marked in people’s lives. The lack of resources available in the shops… and the bureaucracy was something that just left me constantly baffled and irritated.
I was very shocked too by the lack of understanding that many adults had about many, many areas, and it seemed somehow as if their life experience had been so constrained and so restricted for such a long period of time that they found it quite difficult to think more broadly - in the way that we in the west have done all of our lives.
The other thing that shocked me very, very profoundly - and has continued to do so on all my visits to Romania - is that this is a country two and a half hours flying time from London. It’s part of Europe. And yet it is so economically disadvantaged. And what seems to me to have happened since the so-called revolution in 1989 is that many western businesses have come into Romania – presumably because they can make a big profit – and yet the overall economic situation of the Romanian people has not really improved very much - and I think that’s a shame on all of us who have the privilege of coming from Western European countries.
I find that so disheartening – that we put so little into improving the lot of ordinary Romanian people living here.
On her work with Health Aid
I have many, many years of experience of working with HIV and AIDS - and also some experience, as a social worker in the United Kingdom, of working with children who have been very distressed, very disturbed - sometimes sexually abused children who have had to be removed from family situations… so I guess it’s that combination of experience as a professional that’s made me useful to Health Aid Romania.
Having said that I think there have been times when I’ve been asked to participate in training sessions here that I haven’t felt particularly knowledgeable about - and in situations sometimes where my experience feels quite far back in my professional life. An example of that really is the most recent teaching I’ve been doing here - on sex education with young people, and sex education for the house parents. Because [most recently] I have actually been working with people at the other end of life – very, very chronically frail, elderly people – so it’s been a learning curve for me, coming back into working with young people and house parents – but an enjoyable experience as well.
…And perhaps it gives a strength to the teaching sessions, that I’m very open in saying to parents and children that I don’t know everything about the subject that we’re discussing – and some things we learn together, through the process of talking and discussing, of argument and debate. And that concept for Romanian adults is a very new one – they’re not used to being able to debate, or to disagree with something that a teacher is saying to them. It’s a very hierarchical society still, and I guess that years and years of not being able to speak in the way that you want, or to express opinions, has made it very difficult for house parents to think that they also have a point of view that they can express, and openly talk about, without fear of being criticised or told that they’re wrong.
So there have been quite a lot of interesting strands for me in working with the children and the house parents here. It’s an opportunity for them hopefully to become more confident, and to feel that what they are teaching the children day by day is good information - and that they’re not going to be criticised for holding personal views in some areas that are quite difficult to talk about.
The situations in both Colentina and Victor Babes - which are the two infectious diseases hospitals in Bucharest - back in the early to mid 90s were by our western standards extremely shocking. There were very, very few resources in the hospitals.
The nurses largely were very poorly qualified because – as I understand it – pre 1989, there had been no nursing education in this country for about thirty years. There had been no social work training available in Romania for about the same period of time. And that was because Ceausescu thought those two professions – nursing and social work – were a waste of time.
One of the early things that Anne McNicholas from Health Aid UK – which was the founding charity for Health Aid Romania – one of the very, very good things that Anne did was to reintroduce nursing training into Romania, so that in fact, in the years that I’ve been coming, I’ve seen an enormous improvement in the capacity of nurses to meet the needs of children in their care.
Back in the mid-90s, children were having extended periods of time in Colentina Hospital - even those living in Health Aid Romania houses, they would go into hospital and stay there for quite extended periods of time if they had particular health problems…
How long?
Sometimes for weeks at a time – sometimes for months. For a sick child to spend time in hospital – whether it’s a few days or a week – is difficult in the United Kingdom, because it’s away from its familiar environment, it’s away from its parents, it can be quite a frightening experience. And of course in most children’s hospitals now throughout the UK, a parent would be able to stay in the hospital with the child. That’s not the position of the children in the care of Health Aid Romania.
On medication in the early days
I guess one of the most significant things in those earlier years when I started coming to Romania was that there was very little consistent medication available for HIV+ children, and so the children were very much at risk of infections associated with HIV. And many of them were very, very ill indeed.
…At the end of one day I’d gone with Anne McNicholas to the children’s pavilion, to see a little boy who was exceedingly ill. We found him in a room on a bed – it was extremely hot, he had a temperature. He was quite clearly in pain – he had a full AIDS diagnosis but there was no medication. He should have been receiving morphine. Anne had managed to get permission to use morphine, and she knew that there was morphine available – so she was very angry. She talked to the nurse on duty. I was left with this child – he started to vomit. I looked for a bowl, but there wasn’t even that. I finished up holding a plastic bag for him – I was very angry, there was no dignity - no nurse available…
It’s an example of how things have changed – hopefully things have improved, but I spend very little time in the hospitals now because the main work is caring for children who - by and large - are very well…
…One child that I’m sure you will have met in the course of making this documentary is a boy called [-----] who is now, I think, sixteen years of age. But when I first met him, [-----] was about nine, and he was desperately ill most of the time. And he reached the point of being close to death on several occasions because there was no medication, effectively, to treat his illnesses.
And that was true for all of the children. Then - I think in about 1998, 99 - they were able to provide a combination therapy of two drugs for most of the children who were – at least known to Colentina Hospital - I don’t think this is true throughout Romania. There would have been other areas where children who were HIV+ would have had no effective access to medication at all.
But the problem then was that the drugs often were not available consistently. And the problem with antiretroviral medication is that it has to be taken on a very consistent basis – and in Romania, they would have it for periods of months, perhaps, and then the government would run out of money to provide the drugs so the children would be left without medication…
…I’m very relieved to hear that by – certainly, 1993 – there had been an arrangement between the drug companies and the Romanian government that ensures that all children in Romania are now able to access necessary medication for their HIV status. And we know that with the Health Aid children at least, they are getting the same kind of combination drug therapy that kids in England would have.
And this has to mean that they have a comparable chance of getting well with… living with AIDS. So that’s been a very big stage of progress, and it’s important for me to remind myself of that, because in other aspects it can sometimes feel as if nothing very much has changed. At all.
On attitudes in the early days
In the early days it was very much about - as I said earlier, encouraging the professional staff to understand the children a lot better, to find ways of communicating with the children that were appropriate to individuals – not just regarding them as a group of children who all had “a sickness”, who could all be treated in the same way.
And I realised from that first workshop that one of the very important things that Min and I achieved… …was that we gave some of the doctors, the nurses, social workers, psychologists, the “infirmieres” – who are like, I guess equivalent to domestic staff in a UK hospital – the educators, the unqualified teachers in the hospital - we gave them all an opportunity to actually think about experiences of loss in their own lives. And we had an incredible three-day workshop, where I worked with the adults and allowed them to put themselves in the place of a child, to think back to their own childhood, to talk about their losses…
At the end of the workshop we in fact had the most incredible memorial service, and this was something that was a new experience for the staff. We had candles, we had flowers… we had a moment of silence and then we invited people who had been participants in the workshop to come forward, and light a candle for some loss that they had experienced. And we said that it could be the death of a child they’d cared for; it could be the death of someone in their own family; or it could be the loss of their own childhood.
And we were a little apprehensive because this is not a common kind of sharing of experience in Romania – it’s a society that has developed in very different kinds of ways.
Anyway, at that memorial service, the first person that came forward was the head of the paediatric service at Colentina Hospital, [----], who’s a very amazing doctor. And he talked about his own loss, he lit a candle, and he was able to actually cry – in front of all these participants in the workshop – and it gave a freedom to everyone who was there to also become emotional.
And that – it sounds such a tiny thing, but it was an enormous breakthrough here, and people then all participated in this memorial service. And when we’d lit all of the smaller candles we had a very large candle, like you would in a church, and I said to the group – let’s take this candle and flowers and place it in the peace garden.
The peace garden at that time was outside the children’s pavilion, and it had been provided by a group of UK journalists who’d come to Colentina back in 1990, and they’d been terribly shocked by the poverty in Bucharest – they’d been very shocked by hearing about the children who’d been infected with HIV in the institutions. And they’d provided money to create a garden where the very sick children could be wheeled out to enjoy the flowers, the sunshine, all the things we take so much for granted.
And a Romanian sculptor had made a very beautiful sculpture – a symbolic statue of Christ holding the lamb. So we took this candle and the flowers out into the garden - and everyone said to me ‘it will just be stolen, the candle will be stolen, the flowers will be taken, the candle will not last more than a few minutes’.
And I said, it doesn’t matter. Let’s do it. And we went and we placed this enormous candle at the foot of the statue and we put the flowers there and we stood in a semi-circle, just in silence. And do you know, what was incredible was that there’d been a wind in the morning blowing through the hospital grounds, and the wind died down completely.
And that candle remained alight, for some period of time – at the end of the day, not one flower had been taken from that memorial, the candle was still there at the foot of the statue… and people were very amazed by this.
It was a new respect that they had not anticipated would be possible in Bucharest. So that was an amazing end to that workshop. And I guess maybe for me it was a humbling experience – it always is every time I come to Romania.
On changes in Romania
I do find it quite difficult just surviving in Romania. …Everything is very difficult here. The streets are very dirty, it’s hard to understand the language – I’ve never learned Romanian, which is a particular disability. I don’t find people in Romania are very open when you try to have a discussion with them about things. All those things are very difficult - and the bureaucracy is just – limitless. And very frustrating.
So I can easily – when I’m here for short periods of time I can become very frustrated myself and think – what’s the point of coming and trying to do this work? What do the Romanians themselves gain from it?
And yet if I stop and remember those earlier workshops – how the children now have grown from being very sick to being young adults, and very attractive, very healthy – many of them have made incredible achievements in their lives – and some of that has been helped by the kind of workshops that I’ve been able to facilitate with Health Aid Romania, that have encouraged the kids to think differently, to talk about their illness, to understand that being HIV+ is not the end of their world, that they can go on and achieve, and be creative - that they can have relationships when they’re old enough, that they can – some of them may choose to have children, and that will be fine.
So it’s important for me to set the frustrations aside and remember the point of why I started coming to Romania at all…
On the head of Health Aid Romania, Tina Rotariu
…I find it amazing that Tina has somehow managed to stay the course for so many years, because it is a totally life-consuming occupation, to be the Executive Officer of this project. And in a western context, you think of an executive officer - who maybe works ten to twelve hours a day but then goes home and has many other activities that have nothing to do with work. For Tina work goes home with her. Kids go home with her, from time to time if necessary, and they have time out from the house – she constantly is answering three phones at once and dealing with so many complex problems, some of which are fairly trivial – some of which are major, and have an impact on the kids lives.
And I think that’s to her credit that she can do this day in, day out, three hundred and sixty five days a year, no break – I couldn’t do it. I would have an expectation that I would have an annual holiday every year. This doesn’t happen at Health Aid Romania. Staff do not have an annual holiday – except for a week at the seaside, which they take with all the children. So there’s very little space and time for oneself. Very little time to reflect on the way that you’re working, or the way that you’re thinking.
And I do give her all credit for still being able to manage to do all that, and to still be running a project which is innovative – that certainly was an absolutely unique model of care of institutionalised children when it began in 1991, 92.
On informing children about their HIV status
Tina asked me to do a workshop with the children to tell them what it meant to be HIV+. It turned out that the house parents found it too difficult to tell the children, because they believed that HIV equalled AIDS equalled death.
This was the same in the UK during the late 90s. Here in Romania there had been few steps forward – no public education. The house parents were very scared. Dr [-----] was not allowed to tell the children without permission of the house parents, who were too afraid that they wouldn’t cope. Tina asked me to come and tell them because she feared they would reach the stage of questioning…
In ‘99 I came to do a workshop where we would tell the older children what HIV was and what it meant. We had 12 older children. I asked them what their understanding was of how they came to be in institutional care.
[-----] had been portrayed as a nice boy, but not very capable of understanding. When he came to explain, he came out with the most extraordinary response – he told me he was one of many children, his birth mother was very poor and had placed him in an institution.
He also told me that he understood Ceausescu’s history… he said he had no resentment to his mother. He showed a level of understanding and maturity that was quite amazing and totally different from how the adults saw him.
And we asked the children to draw a picture of how they saw themselves… they drew pretty demeaning, unattractive pictures. We said that later in the day they could do another.
I gave them a very simple explanation of HIV. I talked with them about AIDS. I told them that many people in different parts of the world had it, and that I personally knew a lot of children in London with it. The kids were amazed because they really thought they were a unique, freakish group. At the end of the workshop they drew pictures of themselves smiling, they talked about their aspirations… they were in a moment transformed.
I learned by email that that workshop remained a breakthrough for those children. They were able to talk with the house parents about their expectations, themselves…
On the problems of Health Aid’s finances
I want to speak about a very big problem for HAR. Finances. Every time I come there are one or two more children in the houses, who needed to come [to a home] from the hospital. The house parents, being as they are, don’t easily let the children remain institutionalised. Every time I come the walls are expanded for new children.
Finances – for teachers, to keep the vehicles on the road… endless bills, never money for specific children. I suggested individual child sponsors around the world. There’s a child – [-----] at [-----] House – very shy, little self esteem, didn’t wear nice clothes, wasn’t included in the group. She was always on the fringe.
I suggested a psychological assessment of her needs - so they understood better her specific needs. I found a couple in Australia, a judge and… they had seen nothing about Romania since 1990. But Edward was interested to know. When I told him, he and Julia decided that they would help. They didn’t have a lot of money, but they could help in a small way.
They paid for a psychological assessment – which found she had an obsession for horses. No one knew she knew so much about them, but she loved them.
Next time I came I brought a letter and money from Edward and Julia to enable her to have horse-riding lessons. She was very excited to have someone in the world interested in her. Then I showed her the money – she was totally silent, and I thought, what’s the matter?
She ran out of the room and returned with four horseshoes she had found on walks… they explained that was the closest she ever thought she’d get. She was so excited.
Individual sponsors who only have a bit of money can really make a difference in a country like Romania.
On facilitating sex education workshops
With the most recent, sex ed workshops – what I found was it was necessary to meet with the house parents first, because I wondered how much they themselves knew. We had done a workshop the year before when I talked about safe sex, demonstrated condom use, helped them to be able to talk about safe sex.
It was very evident they’d not had a lot of education – like many of us they’d had to muddle along, work it out for themselves. But we wanted the children to have better.
The kids engaged at such an amazing level – so many questions. A lot of these kids are now integrated in mainstream school – they’ve heard lots of inaccurate stuff. We had a very lively workshop. All of the children – 30 – who participated wanted very much to practise putting a condom on a cucumber. There was a lot of hilarity - but it was crucially important.
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