Director Kate Blewett visits a children's care home in Bulgaria and investigates the conditions in which the children live.
Following the completion of the film, the production team offered the Bulgarian Embassy in London the opportunity to comment on the findings made in the course of filming the documentary:
Read the letter from the production team to the Ambassador
Read the response from the Bulgarian Ambassador
What is happening to the children now?
The Social Care Home - where 75 unwanted children are growing up - is the main employer in the small village of Mogilino. Few of the children can talk, not necessarily because they are unable but rather because no one has ever taught them how.
Kate meets the children in this tragic, silent world, such as Milan, the gentle giant who spends his days doing chores and watching over the others, and mildly autistic 18-year-old Didi, who is able to talk, and has plenty to say, but no one to speak to. The children that surround them suffer a variety of problems, many are blind or deaf and some are unable to leave their beds, many are literally wasting away.
Abandoned into the hands of the staff at Mogilino these children inhabit a bleak uncaring world, so devoid of normal everyday stimulus that many have taken to rocking slowly and constantly in their chairs just for something to do.
Bulgaria has more institutionalised mentally and physically disabled children than anywhere else in Europe. This film is a heart-rending and eye-opening look into the life of one such institution.
Update: Friday 16 November 2007
Some changes have taken place since the first showing of this film on BBC Four in September 2007. A team of Non Government Organisations (NGOs) is working with the government to bring about changes to the lives of disabled children growing up in the state institutes in Bulgaria. This NGO alliance is made up of teams who have been working on the ground in Bulgaria for years.
The children in the home in Mogilino have recently been assessed by a medical team, and rehabilitation plans are being put together for each child. Specialists like speech therapists and physiotherapists are being assigned to Mogilino to work with the children.
In the long term the plan is to either build purpose-built small group care homes for the disabled - or to relocate the children to better environments with Day Care Centres and potential schooling.
For further information about Bulgaria and organisations working in this area, see the links on the right of the page.
