In 1999, working for the European Commission's office in Bucharest, I was given responsibility for overseeing the European Union's financial assistance for the reform of the child protection system in Romania. That role placed me in a unique position: being inside the European Commission allowed me to develop an understanding of the Commission's demands to Romania in relation to children in care; at the same time, being Romanian myself, I was able to communicate with professionals and children in care in an informal manner, and to develop an understanding of why children ended up in institutions.

As part of my work, I travelled to every local authority; I visited children's homes, talked to child protection directors and to staff of the institutions. Conversations with the children could not go much beyond a short and friendly exchange, although I learned a lot from my visits. It was only when I met and befriended a number of teenagers who were in care that I really understood the subtleties of the care system. They were winners of ‘Edelweiss’, a talent competition for children in institutions that I had suggested to the government as part of the wider public awareness campaign ‘A Children's Home Is Not a Real Home’. The aim of the campaign was to promote foster care and domestic adoption as alternatives to residential institutions. The competition had nine different categories – such as arts and crafts, sports, computer science, creative writing – and it brought together young people from all over the country with very different skills and different care experiences. The award ceremony was broadcast live by a TV channel and it had a huge number of viewers. For once, children in care had appeared in the public eye not through what they lacked but through what they had to offer. In addition to a scholarship aimed to nurture their talent, the winners participated in a summer camp which I attended also. That was where I got to know them and their stories. Some of them had been in care since birth. I have stayed in touch with many of them since. My lifelong friendship with many of them helped me develop an in-depth understanding of the child protection system as they experienced it.

As explained in Chapter 1, the progress in child protection made by Romania in the early 2000s was recognised by the European institutions.