Nicolae Ceausescu's brutal dictatorship in Romania ended in chaos and economic collapse in 1989. The rest of Europe and the world were moved to help when appalling scenes from over-crowded orphanages emerged..

Comber Foundation have been working in Romania since 1990. However the children from those orphanages are now adults and are still in institutions. Comber is setting up small communities in houses where men and women can lead a normal life in small family groups.

They are trying to get the institutions closed because the conditions are appalling.

They are also working with the Romanian government to change the attitude of the people who still see disability of any kind as an embarrassment and who think such people should be 'locked away'

During these years we became aware of a very sinister situation. There are two very separate services for children under and over the age of18. Children in Gradinari who had reached the age of 18, simply disappeared. After much detective work, we finally tracked these young adults to an institution called Bolintine Vale

Bolintine Vale is the most shocking, upsetting and saddest place I have ever seen. A friend of mine, who visited with me, described it as evocative of black and white film footage of the survivors of liberated World War Two concentration camps. The absence of human dignity, the utter absence of hope and the complete sense of abandonment.

Bolintine Vale is home to 150 adults, who are simply existing in this truly appalling institution. It is not just an institution for young adults with intellectual disabilities but is also a dumping ground for adults who don’t quite fit into Romanian society. For example, Mihai had both legs amputated from the above the knee as a result of a train accident and was thus unable to work. His family abandoned him in Bolintine Vale. Costel is a very gentle, quite man in his sixties. When his wife died, Costel became very depressed and drank a lot. His family abandoned him in Bolintine Vale. Viorel is an extremely intelligent man in his thirties. While studying at university, Viorel had a ‘psychotic’ episode and was diagnosed with schizophrenia and his family abandoned him to Bolintine Vale. Viorel is better read than anyone I know. He is fluent in three languages and acts as my translator. To have people like this, plus adults with severe to profound intellectual and physical disabilities, plus young adults with violent and challenging behaviours all in the one institution leads to Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest – which in turn means that the weakest do not survive in Bolintine Vale.