Romania Grows with You

Romania has a large early childhood population and a system that has struggled to serve it. The national picture the project worked against:

• 1.36 million children aged 0–6 lived in Romania (2018).
• 41.5% of Romanian children were at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2021, against an EU average of 24.4%. 28.2% lived in severe material deprivation — the highest rate in the EU.
• Preschool participation for 4-year-olds to school age was 84.5% in 2020, against an EU average of 95.4%. For Roma children, the participation rate was 27%.
• Of the 21,690 children enrolled in crèches nationally in 2021–22, only 698 were in rural areas — 3.2%. More than 90% of crèches were urban.

Six structural gaps framed the work: too few services for children between 3 months-6 year olds, particularly in rural area, inadequate infrastructure and poor rate children-educator; almost nothing for 0–3s; no coordination between health, social, care and education; unskilled staff, especially for under-3s; no access for poor and marginalised communities; and very little public understanding of why early childhood matters.

Twenty-two municipalities carried out their own analysis, with one municipality dropping out. The picture that came back was remarkably consistent, and in several places, it was genuinely new information for the people who ran the services.

Services existed that families didn’t know about. In Bacău, only 9.3% of families knew there were family meeting places for young children and parents. Only 12% knew about playgroups. Only 13% knew about parent counselling centres. In Codlea, parents knew about kindergartens and playgrounds — but were largely unaware of the hospital’s paediatric department, the public speech therapist and psychologist, the library’s children’s section and the children’s club.

Specialist capacity was stretched past breaking point. Bacău municipality had seven speech therapists between every school and kindergarten in the city, and seven school physicians and eight dentists covering 63 school medical offices. Făgăraș had one speech therapist for its entire ante-preschool and preschool population — and no paediatric recovery, orthopaedics, surgery, neurology or psychiatry at all.

Places for the youngest children simply weren’t there. Făgăraș had one crèche, with 30 places against a demand of 80. Because of it, under-3s were being enrolled in kindergartens instead, pushing groups roughly 20 children over the legal limit across the municipality. Brașov’s crèche participation rate was 15.79%, with no crèche in the city centre.

Children were missing entirely. Făgăraș identified roughly 330 preschoolers not attending kindergarten at all — around 100 in the Galați neighbourhood and 220 in Combinat. The reasons given: lack of money, fear of illness, parents’ own low education, the child’s dependency on the parent, and simply no places.

Vulnerability was concentrated and rising. About a quarter of Bacău’s population lives in marginalised census tracts, disadvantaged at once on human capital, employment and housing. In Brașov, cases of children affected by domestic violence and single-parent families in the social records rose between 2016 -2019.

And nothing joined up. Brașov’s analysis put it plainly: “Currently there are no well-established networks of collaboration between institutions providing integrated early childhood development services.”

Then COVID arrived mid-analysis. Every report had to be rewritten to add a chapter on digital skills, remote learning infrastructure and the conditions of vulnerable families — no electricity, no internet, no devices, no adult digital skills. In one Codlea kindergarten, 49 of 253 enrolled children could not connect to online education at all.

Priorities were set locally, and they varied — but they clustered.

Places for families to be together. A quality socialising space for mothers and children (Râșnov). A “Mother and Child” service at the House of Culture or Municipal Library (Codlea). Recreation spaces — library, toy library, playgrounds (Victoria). A toy library plus a Parents’ Club (Budila). A multifunctional “Parents’ School” (Tărlungeni).

Reaching the youngest and the least served. Increasing ante-preschool participation for 0–2s and campaigning against discrimination in marginalised urban areas (Bacău). An “Early Education Caravan” for children in isolated areas. A social crèche. Crèche groups for children from vulnerable communities.

Building the workforce locally. Făgăraș got a puericultor-educator specialisation approved at a local pedagogical high school so that crèche staff could be trained in the town rather than recruited from elsewhere. Onești set out to accredit 13 parental educators; four had completed the course by December 2021.

Making information findable. Făgăraș wanted an interactive early education platform listing every programme, service, project, NGO and available place, kept permanently up to date. Brașov wanted an online platform where all city directorates post information for families. Two municipalities built integrated service platforms.

Codlea’s adopted list gives the flavour of a full transfer from analysis into a Local Development Strategy: an extended-hours crèche; toys and teaching materials for kindergartens; speech therapy in kindergartens; early childhood specialisation for crèche staff; a complementary “Family and Child” service; information campaigns on early education, care and hygiene; pre- and post-natal courses; new fenced playgrounds with furniture suited to young children; a RESPIRO centre giving parents a few free hours while children are supervised; a sports complex; and a school bus adapted for children with special educational needs.

At the level of the local authority

• 21 of 22 communities presented their situation analysis to the Local Council.
• 16 strategies were developed or revised across the 21 communities — most embedding a distinct early education section into the Local Development Strategy, with Brașov going further and preparing a stand-alone Early Childhood Education Strategy.
• Every community increased its early childhood funding.
• Formal partnership agreements were signed with each local authority and key county agencies. The evaluation identifies these as the single most important factor in the project’s effectiveness.
• Listed as the most unexpected achievement: the constant participation of mayors, deputy mayors and local councillors in the working meetings of the local team and in events at the new services; the mobilization of local teams for fundraising attracting more funds to municipality for the implementation of the strategy (6 municipalities in Brasov County).

At the level of local capacity

• More than 250 people joined local project teams across the 22 communities, supported by 7 area facilitators and 22 local coordinators.
• 21 of 22 communities completed the full situation analysis process — described in the project’s own reporting as “a success in itself, as it ensured the collaboration between specialists from different fields, together with representatives of the beneficiaries.”
• A data habit took hold. In some communities, teams re-launched their questionnaires two years later to update the picture and review their priorities.
• The lasting achievement, in the project’s own words: “The existence of a municipality-level team as an engine for the development of early childhood initiatives.”

At the level of services

PrimoHubs. Non-formal early childhood services were established in 18 of the 21 municipalities — hosted in libraries, crèches, kindergartens, day centres, high schools and primary school classrooms. See the section below.

Infrastructure, built or renewed during and after the project:

25

playgrounds and parks for young children

5

new crèches built

8

crèches rehabilitated, renovated or extended

7

new kindergartens built

16

kindergartens rehabilitated, renovated or extended

3

outdoor landscaping works at early education services

2

pedestrian walkways or crossings

Posts created or re-established: a school mediator (1 municipality), a medical assistant (1), a dentist (1), school counsellors (2), a paediatric guard service (1), accredited parental educators (1), and integrated service platforms (2).

Groups and provision: groups for 2–3 year-olds established in 2 municipalities; crèche groups for children from vulnerable communities in 2; short-programme groups converted to extended-programme groups in 1.

Training: 44 sessions and workshops delivered between 2019 and 2022 — around 685 participants for ECEC for under 3s, and and 2,493 at preschool level. An initial training course was created for future professionals working with under-3s. A Facebook community of practice grew past 800 members.

At the level of children and families

• Kindergarten participation rose in most project municipalities. In some, the age of entry fell, so more children reach school readiness and reach it earlier — including in vulnerable communities. School professionals reported reduced kindergarten absenteeism and improved school attendance.
• Access measures for vulnerable families: crèche places reserved for social cases increased in one municipality; documented fee exemptions for families in financial difficulty; joint work with social services to prioritise enrolment for children at risk, single-parent families and domestic violence cases; support for an underage mother to complete her studies; a hygiene area with showers provided in an isolated community for children and families without those conditions at home.
• Parents’ attitudes shifted — greater awareness of the early years, and mothers becoming more demanding about quality. In some communities, developing services for birth–6s is now seen as a way to support the birth rate and attract young families.

Beyond the municipalities

Step by Step Centre coordinated the “Early education accessible to all” working group of the presidential Educated Romania programme, contributed to the working groups behind Romania’s first unified ante- and pre-school curriculum in 2019, and convened parliamentary round tables on adding early education assistant to the national occupational classification and on group sizes and adult-to-child ratios for 0–6s. It also commissioned Romania’s first public opinion poll on the perception of early education.