The Life Foundation

Charity based in the UK working in Romania to: Reduce the impact of institutionalisation in family type homes and adult institutions. Promote community living and support children in the community to remain at home. Provide specialist resources and equipment, along with support and training for Romanian staff.

thelifefoundation.co.uk

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Latest News

Special Delivery !

We thought we would let you know about some of the things that have been going on behind the scenes over in Romania…we have been very lucky to receive some special deliveries!

The LIFE Foundation would like to say a huge thank you to Physionet, who delivered a bunch of equipment, including wheelchairs, crutches and zimmer frames, to Centrul Maria Beatrice Alba Iulia in Romania. We were able to pick up these much-needed items and distribute them to those that needed them most.

Some of the equipment will be used in Ceizini and Price Association, to support adults with disabilities to move around and connect with each other more easily. Norica, our lovely co-ordinator has also organised a delivery of flour and sanitiser to these organisations, which will come in very handy!

Other equipment, such as supine standers, specialist wheelchairs and a bath chair, will support children will various disabilities in the Family Type Homes (FTHs). This equipment will play a crucial role in the children’s physiotherapy programme and will ultimately make a huge difference to their quality of life.

We also had a delivery of Aymes, specialist nutrition products that some of the children in the FTHs and the local community are supported with. We are so grateful for these donations as they are crucial for maintaining weight and ensuring overall good health.

Finally, Intersurgical have kindly donated a year’s supply of filters for a child’s ventilator. These will enable the filters to be replaced more than once a week, which is currently much more than has been possible previously. These will make a massive difference to the young person’s life and the management of her condition.

We are incredibly grateful for all of the donations we receive. We really couldn’t do it without this extra support. If you or anyone you know might be able to contribute any other donations, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

With love from the whole team at the Life Foundation xx

What we have been doing during lockdown

Like many charities, we have been significantly impacted by the global pandemic. Unfortunately, due to travel restrictions and concerns about the spread of the virus, we have been unable to offer our usual summer volunteer and specialist trips to Romania. However, we haven't been idle, and have instead used the time and energy we would have spent arranging and supporting these trips to reflect and plan for the future.

We have made the difficult decision to stop our summer volunteering programme. This is in response to reduced volunteer numbers and concerns about "voluntourism". Instead we will be focusing on our "specialist" trips. In addition to the health professionals we typically recruit for these trips, we intend to offer limited spaces to individuals who are interested and would previously have joined our summer programme. During coronavirus, staff in the institutions we support have shown an amazing commitment to the residents, including some staff moving in to reduce risk, and we have been sending resources such as sports equipment to help keep residents entertained.

In addition to how we continue to improve the quality of life of individuals living in Government care, we have been considering how we can support families in the community, so individuals can avoid being institutionalised in the first place. We are developing plans for this and making alliances with colleagues and services in Romania to this end.

We are also focusing on fundraising, which has become more challenging now we will not have donations from volunteers to fund our multi-disciplinary team working in Romania.

We have recognised that although we are busy all the time, we are not brilliant at telling others what we have been doing, and so to help with this we have been improving our website and thinking about how we can provide more regular updates to our supporters.

We are proud of the positive changes we are making and we are excited to put things into place when our multi-disciplinary team is cleared to get back to face to face work, and travel to Romania will again be possible. We look forward to sharing the ongoing developments!

About us

In 2012, The Life Intervention Friendship and Education (LIFE) Foundation was conceived, taking over an already established non-profit organisation which primarily worked in Oltenia in Romania, working with babies, children and adults living in Government institutions.

Our first job was to formalise a volunteer project which had been running over the summer months, with volunteers from the UK travelling to Oltenia to provide entertainment and activities across six family type homes (with 36 children) and two adult institutions (with 70 adults in each). All the individuals living in the institutions had additional physical, medical and/or psychological needs.

We worked alongside the Romanian authorities to make a plan for volunteers to work across the family type homes and adult institutions. This included providing training to volunteers and undertaking DBS checks. We also needed translators to support our volunteers and were lucky enough to find some young Romanian volunteers, who worked hard as translators, acted as helpful guides for our volunteers and learned more about the needs of the beneficiaries and improved their English along the way.

We felt that although our volunteer project had a positive impact on our beneficiaries, it was seasonal and not necessarily focused on individual’s needs and development. It was hard to make a long term impact and ensure sustainability and continuity. We started to develop and fund a Romanian multidisciplinary team made up of professionals who could provide the children with daily input, support staff and provide regular interventions for the adults. Our team has changed over the years, however there has been one constant and that has been our lovely Norica Popa. Norica has been working with in the care system since she was 18 years old and has known a lot of our beneficiaries for many years. We have supported and invested in Norica, for example supporting her to train as a nurse and undertake play therapy courses. Norica has also looked after 100s over volunteers over her many years and many will agree that she is the heart and soul of our project in Romania. She is supported by Mr Piui, the director of our Romanian partner charity William Tyrell. More recently we added a physiotherapist, Nicu to our multi-disciplinary team and hope to add other professionals soon.

We knew that professional input was really valuable for our beneficiaries and that our Romanian multi-disciplinary team appreciated input from UK health workers. In 2012, we embarked on our first specialist trip with a combination of qualified health professionals and professional students, with the aims of developing individual care programs for the beneficiaries ,and training the carers working within the institutions. Our current trustees actually met on this first professional trip! When we started these trips were not very focused, however over time we have been able to become more responsive and plan our teams and training based on the needs identified by the institution staff and the Romanian multi-disciplinary team.

In 2016 registered as a Charity. This has been a fantastic move and allowed us to continue our ideals and aims as an organisation.

So there have been a lot of changes since The LIFE Foundation started and we are proud of all our achievements. In addition to continuing to support our multi-disciplinary team in Romania and continue professional trips, we are now looking to see how we can support children with additional physical, medical and/or psychological needs in the community, to try to keep them living with their families.