“For the first time, there was freedom”: Pavel’s experience of foster care after 13 years in an institution
12.12.2025
Pictured: Pavel speaking at the roundtable event ‘Enhancing child protection and care reform in Moldova through EU accession’
Pavel spent the first 13 years of his life in an institution in Moldova, after being placed there as a baby along with his older brother.
He had no idea what had happened to his parents – though he later tracked down his mother. All he had ever known during his time in the institution he shared with his brother and three other children was violence, a lack of food, and never feeling love.
One of the hardest things about living in an institution is you can’t feel love…You have to call these people parents – mother and father [but] they didn’t love us or care for us.
-Pavel
Pavel says having his older brother living with him helped, as he defended him when feeling unsafe under the supervision of the adults at the institution. But when he turned 13, the brothers decided to run away with another boy at the facility.
We prepared our bags, and at 3 am we leapt over the fence. By morning, we were already at Floris City, and we went to the apartment where the boy’s parents lived and stayed there for three days.
-Pavel
He was eventually taken to the children’s department at a local hospital, where a social worker gave him the option to live with a foster family. This moment changed Pavel’s life dramatically. He says foster care was ‘like being in a different world.’
For the first time, there was freedom… I could shower when I wanted and watch TV in the morning. In the institution, my food was portioned, and there were set times to eat it, whereas in the foster home, there was always food on the table and in the fridge.
-Pavel
He fondly remembers making friends with some local boys and learning to swim in the river, and family celebrations where he would set the table and everyone would gather round to eat and talk.
“I don’t think I have ever felt what it is like to be loved by parents, but my foster mum felt equal,” he says. “I could talk to her about anything, and she’d answer my questions, or if she didn’t know the answer, she would find it for me.”
After six months in foster care, Pavel moved in with his brother, before then going to vocational school to learn to be a tiler. It was there that he was encouraged to join Lumos’ Advisory Council and share his experience of the care system at national and international conferences, contributing to plans to improve the lives of children in care.
Thanks to Pavel and others like him sharing their experience, we have been able to support the Government and other agencies in Moldova to make significant progress in ending institutionalisation.
In 2009, there were approximately 12,000 children in residential care institutions. Most recent figures show there are now 700, and the Government has pledged to end institutional care by 2027.
Pavel is now 23, has studied to be a social worker and has co-founded an organisation to give children in care a voice. He says he wants his own family one day and to give his children the love he didn’t have.
I will continue to share my own experience of life in an institution to prevent others going through what I did. No child should live in an institution – everyone deserves a loving family.
–Pavel
This story is part of the Lumos Home for the Holidays Appeal series. Join our annual appeal so we can give more children the greatest gift of all this holiday season, a safe and loving family.
