State silently watches children sniffing glue

 
No institution wants to take care of the children addicted to heroine and glue

Mirkica Popovik

A 29 years old mother with her children beg daily on the streets of Skopje. Her two sons, aged 11 and 13 are addicted to heroin. Her 6 year-old daughter is addicted to sniffing glue. Instead of being taken care of by an institution which would provide appropriate help, the mother states that they are left to the mercy of roaming the city streets every day. The hardest part is when they suffer with abstinence crisis. The parents are left without a choise, so thay have to help the children themselves, to calm them down with “ketonal” (painkiller medicine) or to let them sniff glue to ease their pain.
The under-aged children-addicts phenomena is not a new appearance.  “Utrinski vesnik” stirred up this discussion topic a number of times what was followed by a police action for taking these children off the street. Even so, the number of minors (juveniles) that roam the city streets with bags of glue, both night and day, of responsibility that the authorities have taken so far. A year later, the state is still without a strategy for helping the children-adddicts.
“There must be something wrong when 10 year-old children are glue and heroin addicts and nobody does anything to stop it”, state the NGO authorities that are working on preventing this occurrence for years.
Enisa Eminovska, member of the First Children’s Embassy Megjashi” and a long-year activist for the rights of socially outcast families, says that there is chaos in the state when it comes to this matter that always runs up in a dead-end. According to her, both the children and the parents are left on their own, because there is no institution that would take care of the minors (juveniles)  aged between 5 and 14, that have been addicted to glue or heroin for a couple of years already. The Center for addiction treatment sent Eminovska to the Center for mental health, giving an explanation that it is not responsible for dealing with too young children under the age of 16. The Center for mental help was not able to help her, because they worked only with children that were first-time users and not with ones that are already addicted to drugs. These minors are in need of constant medical and psychological help, but there is no institution prepared to help them because of their age.
An additional problem is the fact that a large number of these children and their families are homeless. “A very small part of them have health-insurance and documentation, making it even more difficult to use government-provided medical tests and care to establish whether or not they are addicts and give them help. Tests done in private institutions  are not considered valid”, states Eminovska, commenting further that these children are exposed to the danger of Hepatitis C, because of the fact that the ones using heroin share needles and syringes.

The police are informed about these cases because of the frequent criminal activities the children fell into. It is no secret that the children buy the heroin for just 100 denars, but there is no a strategy to prevent that. “The fines do not help, because they force the children to stay on the street and beg longer to pay the fine, instead of solving the problem” states our interviewee.

But according to Irena Todorovska, manager of the Department for Social inclusion with the Ministry of Labor and Social affairs, “there is no need for excitement, because this is a normal occurrence even in the states of the EU”. According to her words, there is no strategy to help the specific cases of under-aged addicts. If citizens report these cases to, the social workers, in collaboration with the Police, take the children and summon the parents, list out a report and if inappropriate parental behavior is confirmed, parental rights are revoked and the children are put in orphanhomes. In the words of Todorovska, there are 7 registered cases in 2009, where the court had ruled such a verdict for revoking parental rights.
The children are put in the “11ti Oktomvri” orphanage, in “Ranka Marinkovic” and in “25tti Maj”. However, for activist Eminovska this is not a long-term solution, because the homes are open-type institutions and after a couple of days the children escape and go back on the street. The authorities wonder how can it be that the Police is informed and familiar with these cases, to run into them on the street every day, they are listed in the reports by social workers and still these children are wandering on the street day and night on frequent locations, falling even deeper in their vice.
Asked about what is being done about the street-children, Todorovska notes that about 400 of them are being taken each day to daily care centers, where they work on development of their hygiene habits and basic education. Eminovska, who is in contact with a larger number of families that have children addicts, denies the claim that the centers are open for all of them. They refuse to accept children with addiction problem under the excuse that they are hard to deal with and could have a bad influence on the other children. There is a plan for establishing a consultation office for preventing minors from criminal influence and activity, where the minors (juveniles)  with noted asocial behavior will be sent to. A social worker, psychologist and psychotherapist would be working with the children. Todorovska hopes that by the beginning of 2010, following the examples of some countries from the EU, Macedonia would have specialized homes to take in the street children.
Even beyond that fact, a consultation office is not an appropriate center where children addicts could be treated in the long-term. It is an everyday problem that is not hidden in the dark and murky parts of the city, but is visible in the very center of it. Still, it is looked upon as just an ugly sight that people look away from. 


 http://www.utrinski.com.mk/default.asp?ItemID=1BCDD5D943A7174F9330EE6684311C50

31.9.2009 Utrinski vesnik