Successful social care services are implemented in strict accordance with the principles of social care: social solidarity, the universality of the right to social care, guaranteeing its accessibility, the flexibility of social care measures and bringing them in line with the real needs of the person or family in difficulty. As a result, recognizing the independence, the autonomy of personality, and respecting human dignity should guide all your social actions. – Mihai Enache, Project Manager at Tdh, Craiova, Romania.
Mihai Enache joined Terre des homme Romania (Tdh) in 2008, and currently works as a project manager in Craiova, Romania. This past March, Mihai received the award for the social assistant of the year in the field of social inclusion – social economy at the National Gala of Excellence in Social Assistance, in Romania. We had the chance to speak with him about the rewards and challenges of a career in social work.
Childhub: Dear Mihai, first of all, congratulations! What does this award mean to you?
Mihai Enache: Thank you very much! For me, this award is proof of the value of the programmes that Tdh implements in Romania, it represents the appreciation of the professionals who set the quality standards in social care.
Childhub: Can you tell us a bit about your career and what led to this award?
Mihai Enache: I have been working in social care for 15 years, of which 11 were with Tdh. I can say that for me, Tdh is the organization that encourages any person to reach their creative potential within a programmatic framework, and this is precisely what has led to this award: the innovative character of the Tdh programmes.
Childhub: What motivated you to choose social protection as a field of activity?
Mihai Enache: A community educated in the spirit of caring for its children has a guaranteed future. I try to constantly be in a unique position in my efforts to prevent the risks to which children are exposed. Understanding the importance of care received at a young age is the basis of any child protection approach. Meeting the needs of the child is a responsibility for the family and the community, and we owe it to them to permanently support their effort of protecting the children.
Childhub: In your role at Tdh, how do you work with social workers at the community level?
Mihai Enache: Strengthening the local Public Services for Social Assistance (PSSA) is a key objective, given that they are the main promoter of integrated services by implementing social intermediation and outreach to individuals and families in extreme poverty, as well as in marginalized areas. Investing in more and better trained staff in the social sectors is absolutely necessary for developing integrated, multi-disciplinary primary services at the community level. Through our programmes, I am trying to provide the tools and the needed support (training, expert advice, information and resources) to strengthen various local and county actors in their common efforts towards a qualitative child protection system. In 2018 alone, the organisation enhanced the performance of 169 local stakeholders (frontline staff, GDASPC staff, social workers and CCS members), helping them to collaborate more effectively, to gain community recognition, supporting them to develop the necessary skills to overcome their shortcomings.
Childhub: What skills and personal qualities are required in order to be a good social worker?
Mihai Enache: A social worker, in addition to a university education, solid skills and knowledge, must possess the qualities that bring them closer to human beings — qualities necessary to harness empathy and humanity in interpersonal relations. The social worker brings smiles and hope to the faces of those who are in an existential impasse, often touching the heart of the people in need, motivating them to find their inner resources to overcome their difficulties and reinvent themselves, to look to the future with confidence. I would also mention the ability to interact with others, to communicate, to develop trust in others, to actively listen, and to be honest.
Childhub: What makes the social work profession special?
Mihai Enache: The social worker must ensure that every child has their needs of food, clothing, housing, care, health care, education, love, affection, and respect met. The social worker supports the family, which is the most suitable environment in which these needs can be adequately met for the child, because the family, through the functions it performs, aims precisely at meeting the needs of its members. In order to develop properly, children need a protective, supportive environment. Children who have no family, or whose parents do not provide adequate care, risk being unable to benefit from such an environment. Thus, giving each child a chance to grow up in a family is a priority of social care as a profession and the thing that makes it special.
Childhub: What are the main challenges social workers in Romania face?
Mihai Enache: A significant percentage of Romanian children live in poverty, especially in rural areas, which account for over 74% of poor children. One in two children lives in poverty. In 2012, about 53% of children from rural areas were affected by poverty, with the rate dropping to 17% for children in urban areas. In addition to poverty, children from rural areas are more often victims of abuse and neglect, of violence and family abandonment, and the dropout rate is also higher for these children.
Unfortunately, their care is not appropriate. Social care services at the local level are dramatically underdeveloped. The national social protection system, although very complex, merely offers a feeble safety net, through which some children fall out, caught up in shortfalls accumulated throughout the years and isolated in the long run on the scale of social mobility. In fact, in Romania, social care services are lacking completely in rural areas, with only social benefits as social care measures.
Given that the family is the best child-raising environment and that a large part of the risks to which children are exposed have structural causes, social care services must aim at providing access to effective and quality prevention services, accessible to all children in different risk categories, emphasizing the need to prevent separating the child from their family, but also to strengthen social participation and community development.
Childhub: How do you see this profession changing in the next 10 years?
Mihai Enache: Due to difficult economic conditions, neither the state nor NGOs alone can provide the full range of social care services that are absolutely necessary, especially due to the insufficient development of this sector compared to the rest of Europe. Romania and Bulgaria occupy the last place in the European Union in the development of social services for vulnerable categories. Considering Romania's obligations as a member state of the European Union, with a mandatory legal value recognized by art. 6 of the Treaty of Lisbon on the European Union, social services will need to have a broad, sustainable and accelerated development in the coming years. This means the allocation of considerable resources by the local authorities, who have been delegated with the responsibility to provide social care services.
In order to efficiently use these resources and cover the widest range of services and as many beneficiaries as possible, local authorities can and must use other resources existing in the community, namely the expertise accumulated in the non-governmental sector, both in the field of social care supply, and in management and attraction of extra-budgetary resources. Unfortunately, up to now Romania has failed to draft coherent legislation in the field of financing social care with public money. It is hard to imagine that this could be possible without the involvement of the non-governmental sector, which has set up these social care services based on in-depth knowledge of needs, and has accumulated expertise in providing these services.
Childhub: To conclude, what is the message you would like to share with social work students and those who would like to enter this field?
Mihai Enache: Successful social care services are implemented in strict accordance with the principles of social care: social solidarity, the universality of the right to social care, guaranteeing its accessibility, the flexibility of social care measures and bringing them in line with the real needs of the person or family in difficulty. As a result, recognizing the independence, the autonomy of personality and respecting human dignity should guide all your social actions.
Childhub: Thank you very much!