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They are
ill-nourished, poorly clothed and receive no education,
stimulation or affection. The doctor has just £1.10 to spend on
each child every year. It isn't enough to keep them pain free, let
alone attempt treatment. The conditions are subhuman. In one room,
twenty youngsters make do with eight beds. The oldest resident of
the room is a 25 year old spastic who spends each day lying on a
urine-soaked cot.
At meal times,
Romanian 'care' workers spoon feed the children out of buckets.
Nobody has ever taught them to feed themselves. The luckier ones
spend their days in a dust-choked compound, where the emotionally
disturbed rock back and forwards, locked in an individual hell.
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The sanitary' arrangements consist of two baths, four basins and
two lavatories. None of them work. The place smells like a rancid
zoo. This is the institution the Hesley Group, the Tatarai Trust
and CopDrop has set out to reclaim for civilisation.
The Hesley Group, co-founded
by Steve Lloyd, comprises six privately run special schools which
care for the needs of children with emotional and learning
difficulties. LEA's all over the country recognise the Group's
expertise by sending children who have had difficulties into
ordinary schools. The Group is based near Doncaster and appealed
for the food, clothing, medicine, toys, pain and plumbing
equipment they would need to work the transformation. That work is
now underway.
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