Appalling care

Bulgarian authorities have had to grapple with the state of social care. But thanks in part to Blewett's documentary, released in 2007, conditions in care homes have improved dramatically in the past couple of years.

DW: What sort of conditions did you find when you came to the Mogilino home?

Kate Blewett: My first impression was: this is okay. But what you need to do then is go to the beds of the children who are in care there and take back the covers. What you see there is what actually matters. Physically, these children are deeply neglected and what I witnessed in Mogilino was children who were literally starving to death. They were on liquid diets. The proof of the level of care is in the conditions of the children's bodies.

Were these sorts of conditions common right throughout Bulgaria at that time?

Yes. I didn't go to Mogilino because it was the worst. I didn't go there in search of horrific details. During our research work in England, we found out that Bulgaria has the highest number of institutionalized disabled children in Europe. I actually traveled across Bulgaria and looked at 12 different institutes and we ended up in Mogilino because the director let us in. The conditions that I witnessed across Bulgaria were not dissimilar and in fact, some were worse than Mogilino.

Why does Bulgaria have so many institutionalized disabled children?

One reason is that there's a stigma attached to having a disabled child. It's better for the family to hide that child away than to have it known that you have a gene that's defective in the family. Secondly, a lot of the women giving birth to a disabled child - no matter what the level of disability - are actually being told by the staff in the hospital: your child is disabled, this child would be better off in an institute.

So there are lots of cases where the parents give their baby up to an institute with the genuine belief that the child will have a better life in the institute than in a perhaps more impoverished life back at home, where they don't have the money for wheelchairs or ramps.

Were Bulgarians also shocked and surprised when your film was released?

The people of Bulgaria generally speaking did not know before the film came out what the conditions were like in the institutes because unless you have a disabled child that takes you into that world, it's not a world that people visit. The institutes are remote, out in the villages and so people don't have to deal with them because they're not right in front of them every day.

When the film came out, the people of Bulgaria were astounded and dumbfounded that this could be going on around them without them knowing. The media in Bulgaria descended on Mogilino because they wanted to find out why it was like this, and was it like this right across Bulgaria or was this a one-off bad institute? It really started the "media monster" going, which is good for the institutes because it's woken everyone up to what's going on and so changes have now begun.

Thanks to your film, Mogilino was closed down, along with a number of other homes. Are you satisfied with the Bulgarian government's efforts to improve conditions for abandoned children?

I struggled a lot with the Bulgarian government, especially after the film came out. They dealt with it in a very negative way and they denied that there was really a problem and in fact turned it around and said that I had gone to the worst institute, that I was seeking to sensationalize and to bring dishonor to Bulgaria. The government tried to find ways of getting rid of the media's interest.

The viewers were so upset and angry and wanting to do something that thousands and thousands of letters went to MPs and specifically to MEPs, because Bulgaria is part of the European Union now. Because of that pressure and the real will behind people for change, there has been an awful lot going on. The government is beginning to show much more positive reactions towards the disabled and they're actually talking about looking at helping families bring up their disabled children at home, which is a real new thought process in Bulgaria.

Interview: Helen Seeney (sac)
Editor: Rob Turner