"Offer your family to children who need care and love. Become foster parents!".
Maria Ţurcanu, Foster Carer, village of Radenii Vechi, Ungheni District.
Mrs. Turcanu was recruited along with the first group of foster parents in the District of Ungheni, when only few brave hearts took the risk of becoming “professional parents”. She decided to make this step after seeing a TV report that spoke about the life of a family that had taken a child into placement. Following all necessary procedures, Turcanu spouses took a two-year-old orphan girl. Even today Mrs. Turcanu is overwhelmed with feelings and says she will never forget taking the girl for the first time in her arms, while the little child would cling on her and stay like that for minutes.
Turcanu family had only boys of their own, and they wanted a girl very much. The mother dreamt of plaiting her daughter’s hair and tying it with ribbons. The need of sharing their love with other children increased day by day, so the family no longer hesitated and took, in turns, children into placement.
Today Turcanu spouses are proud with five fostered girls. One of them is already grown up and married, and lives in the neighborhood. She has a good household and has recently become a mother. She keeps kind relations with the “parents” who raised her. They help each other and wish for good to each other, like in a true family.
The foster carer urges all those who can afford providing this type of service, not to hesitate and to offer their own family to the children who need most of all parental affection and care. Mrs. Turcanu says that this requires a lot of patience, because every child has his or her own character, and one needs to "find the key to their heart".
In the beginning the neighbors and relatives did not know much about this service and kept asking her, why she decided to take “somebody else’s children” into her family. Now the situation is different. People only appreciate the girls who grew up in Turcanu’s family.
The foster carer does not hide emotions while telling the stories of the children placed in her family.
"When you learn about their drama and their past, you do not regret even for a minute offering them a chance".
Mrs Turcanu is attached to every child she had in care, and although some of them have long left her family, she always remembers them in her prayers. Now the girl who came to their family when she was only two years old is big, does very well at school, and is a true housekeeper. She wants very much to pursue education, to become somebody in life. In fact, it could not be otherwise, considering her special up-bringing and the personal example of life offered by Turcanu spouses. They are sure that the Foster Care Service provides very big chances to children who are not so lucky to have a nourishing family, or whose life went not so well. The foster parent is firm that if you raise a child, “there is one evil less in the world”.
Asked about challenges encountered by a foster carer, Mrs. Turcanu said that there are difficulties not only with the children in placement, but with their own children as well, and that is why she can’t separate them. Mrs. Turcanu does not deny that a foster carer’s salary is not a stable source of income, and that in the end it is anyway invested in the child. She tries to make sure the children placed into her family have everything they need, so that they don’t feel different. Turcanu family keeps record of every detail of their children’s stories, but one can often read in the eyes of a foster parent much more than they say.
Every child should and deserves to be loved and cared after, and those who can offer this love are able to change radically one child’s life.