It seems to have been a long time since the last Newsletter—I can’t imagine what I have been doing! As ever, we have lots of news for you and many people to thank!Another very busy Summer School saw lots of weeks of happy children through the gates. This year, they had the wonderful surprise of new additions to the garden. Thanks to a very generous donation, we were able to buy a lovely new playhouse and a trampoline.
The children love them both and most of the adults have managed to sneak onto them too!
At long last, we are thrilled to be able to tell you that we have managed to register the minibus! As always in Romania we were passed from pillar to post as we tried to find out whether we qualified for a Charity discount from the 5,000Euro ‘first registration tax’. We finally realised that nobody was going to take the initiative of giving us that discount and we prepared ourselves to pay the tax.Having completed the MOT, we were surprised to be told that the tax had been reduced to 2,000Euros, thanks to the good state of the engine, which delighted us! Happy to now pay the tax and get the bus registered, we sent Nicu off with the paperwork. When he came back, he had managed to register the bus for only 600 Euros! Clever Nicu!!
The bus is a fantastic asset to the house and the children have been enjoying lovely days out.
Thank you so much to all of you who have been involved in getting us this far!
By the time this newsletter is being delivered, a team of hard working volunteers will have delivered Christmas presents to all the families of the children who come to Summer School—and had a party for some of them too! They will also have delivered parcels of goodies to orphanages, hospitals and kindergartens throughout Sibiu and Cisnadie.
We really appreciate these volunteers—as we do all our volunteers—since the winter trip is not as pleasant, due to the cold weather and is very hard work, involving buying and wrapping hundreds of presents for different children and family members. However, Father Christmas 
works arduously to get round all the children, with little reward, except the odd glass of Tuica, or two……!Many thanks to everyone who helped make this happen! It really is a very special time for the children.
As usual, over the summer, we spent time visiting the various families of our children. As always, we find the conditions hard to cope with, as most of our families struggle with abject poverty. Anamaria’s family no longer have a fence around their ‘house’, as they had needed to burn it last winter to keep warm.
Another disturbing fact when visiting these families is the number of children who are left to fend for themselves during the day, whilst their parents are out trying to make a living—or at least find food for the day. It is so hard not to compare this to children in our country who have all the modern comforts.We always make sure we take plenty of ‘goodies’ with us when we go, but it would be so lovely to be able to do more for these families.
Of course, it was fantastic this year to have the privilege of meeting Vlad’s family. Vlad’s mum was really pleased to see him and he reacted well to his siblings and wider family. They were all thrilled with his progress, saying that the difference in him was like that between heaven and earth!
As some of you will be aware, we now have a mixture of adults and children living at ‘Little John’s House’. This has brought with it a host of new issues to be dealt with. In fact, just recently, we have had Andrada in hospital, as her behaviour had become very unsettled and her medication needed changing. Through this, we have come to realise that the adult psychiatric hospital is very different to the children’s psychiatric hospital. The adults seem to be even more neglected and sedated than the children and rather disturbingly, Andrada seems to have been allowed to wander into the men’s ward at her will! She has only been washed when our ladies have been in to do it. The ladies are so frustrated with this treatment and even more with the fact that it just doesn’t seem to change.
The old attitudes and prejudices are so deep-set that it sometimes seems impossible for any real change to happen, but we only have to look at our own ladies and Nicu to know that change is very possible and that it has happened in a very real way for the staff at ‘Little John’s House’. The influence of hundreds of wonderful volunteers and friends over the years have made that difference to them—so we know it can be done!
By far our most rewarding task for this year has been to watch Vlad’s progress. It has been hard work and incredibly emotional and often very frustrating to be so far away, but I can only praise the staff for having coped so well with an incredibly difficult situation with no help at all from within Romania.
When we first took Vlad in, some days he would scream non-stop and hit himself constantly. So much so, that the ladies were going home with terrible headaches and the atmosphere was very tense. Their only respite from the screaming was when Vlad took himself off to bed in the afternoon, or slept late in the morning (which seemed to be something he was used to doing) – and no one would dare wake him for fear of triggering this unwanted behaviour.
Over the summer, Vlad’s behaviour improved greatly and when we visited in October, the difference in him was amazing! He is such a lovely boy, with a beautiful smile. He still gets frustrated sometimes and the old behaviour rears its’ head, but it is now much more of an ‘outburst’ than a ‘constant’. I know that we have a lot more work ahead of us with Vlad but I am also confident that we have a lot of rewarding times to come too!
During our visit in October, we were thrilled to be able to deliver toys and craft material to Kindergarten number 15 in Sibiu, from the children at Bluecoat Infants School, Torrington. The children were so excited to see the toys and couldn’t wait to start playing with them. They were also very keen to have contact with the school and learn more about the children.
Recently we have been very concerned about Andrada and Iulia’s Mum—Daniela. She has been in hospital with TB for over two months. I went in to see her in the Contagious Diseases Hospital, in October . The hospital is one of the more ‘overlooked’ buildings in Sibiu and it is a very grim, tucked away building. Daniela is such a thin and weak woman and now looks worse than ever, but she has the added complication that her liver won’t stand the strong TB medication, so she is staying in hospital without any treatment. The doctors would like to send her to Bucharest to investigate further treatment, but she would have to face the six hour train or bus journey on her own and then find her own way to the hospital, so we are trying to see what else we can do for her. Tinca and the ladies are visiting regularly and taking in meals for her and also making sure the other daughter, Andreea, is looked after.
