“Isn’t it time we left orphanages to fairytales?” JK Rowling

When author JK Rowling wrote a couple of years ago about the origins of Lumos, she described how the plight of children in Eastern European institutions had come to her attention. She wrote of the shameful urge to look away.

It was something my colleague and I had become aware of too in 2006, when a NGO newsletter described a place called Torez and conditions which resembled death camps.

On the ground in Ukraine, Terry Hallman had gained a reputation for speaking out about childcare. In 2003, Kyiv Post published his Op Ed, which lambasted the corrupt culture that brought a starving child to his doorstep and another frozen dead to the doorstep of another.

With his ‘Death Camps, For Children’ series of articles Terry explored in full public view how these institutions called Psychoneurological Internats were funded and managed and sketched out a plan for placing all children in loving family homes.

The greater majority were economic orphans who had living parents.

Terry had warned me that there would be resistance. I wasn’t prepared for just how hostile things would become.

Terry and I would become characters in a fairystory created by one determined detractor. We were a business not a charity and had invented a human rights crisis to defraud international development agencies, we learned.

It was what’s known as a sockpuppet campaign. The use of a range of internet profiles to create the impression of widespread criticism. When we answered back, it got nastier.

Terry would be painted as a man with a drugs habit and I, as a child sex offender.

The formal plan for transition was delivered to Ukraine’s government in February 2007 as a ‘Marshall Plan’ for Ukraine. It could be done at a cost of around $800 million over 5 years, phasing out the old orphanage based system to achieve an overall net cost reduction to the state.

“The transitional phase, moving children out of existing institutions and into individual homes — family homes or family type homes — can be completed within five years. This allows time for construction of new homes and training social workers and caretakers. A focused effort on home construction can produce 1600 homes needed within five years, if managed according to Western, particularly US, standards and practices. This will of course require tight financial management, to be sure that funds are used as intended. Due to rising costs and inflation, monthly total for children remaining in state care — family type homes — should be adjusted upwards from $115 per month cited above, to $140. During the transition phase, it will be necessary to operate the “old” system of state institutions as the “new” system is built and children are gradually transferred either to family homes or new family type homes. Thus old and new must be operated simultaneously during the transition phase, creating a temporary but significant increase in overall childcare budget for the state. Afterwards, cost savings from having children returned to their birth families will offset longer-term costs as described above. Care for children in new family type homes will be about the same is in existing orphanages. New homes are a one-time cost — a cost insignificant in comparison with giving each child a family type of home environment.

“There is no substitute for a loving family environment for growing children. Existing state care institutions do not and cannot possibly provide this — despite occasional, lingering claims that state care is the best care for children. This attitude is a holdover from Soviet times when the state was idealized as the best possible caretaker for all, including children. Stark reality does not support that notion.

“While this section has strong focus on financial aspects for reforming childcare in Ukraine, these are just financial numbers to demonstrate that this can be done for an overall, long-term cost reduction to state budget. That is to say, simply, this reform program is at the least financially feasible. The barrier between old and new is the cost of the transitional phase.”

First impact in 2007 was observed in government pledges for 400+ rehab centres for disabled children. It was soon followed by the doubling of adoption allowances and a pilot for the suggested ‘Homes for all Children’ strategy, based in Kharkiv.

By the end of 2010, childcare policy changes were reported to have resulted in a 40% increase in domestic adoption. This was reported in the Kyiv Post as Ukraine’s ‘Overlooked Success Story’

Today our business would be described as a for-purpose company and the strategy one of impact investment.

It’s rather difficult to assess the extent to which our detractor caused harm. It was an extemely stressful experience, which I can’t dismiss as the cause of my own ill health.

We were turned down by everyone. I wrote recently of the experience with Social Enterprise UK where their deputy CEO actually drew attention to the “criticism of our work” online.

In 2011, Terry died of his chronic illness, leaving me with a task.

“ The author of breakthru report “Death camps for children” Terry Hallman suddenly died of grave disease on Aug 18 2011. On his death bed he was speaking only of his mission — rescuing of these unlucky kids. His dream was to get them new homes filled with care and love. His quest would be continued as he wished. “

Befire he died, our reputations were salvaged when the Sunday Times wrote of Torez

“This story will reverberate right around the world and so it should. Ukraine will be judged not by the actions of this cruel few but on how the case is now handled by the authorities. However, we must also look to ourselves for it is no longer acceptable to look the other way.

The Ukrainian maxim: “I saw nothing, my home is on the other side of the village” has no place in the modern world. If by our deliberate blindness, children are allowed to suffer such depravities then, by our inaction, we are all guilty.”

A few weeks ago I’d read on the Lumos website that there was no national plan for reform in Ukraine.

I wrote an open letter to JK Rowling to let her know that there was and that a friend had died in creating it.

What she says, is what we have said too.