The Future of Education

The health status of Roma people in Bulgaria is indirectly influenced by their low educational level. They find it more difficult to give an objective assessment of their health condition and explain what they suffer from because of a lack of health education.

The restricted way of life in the Roma community could become an obstacle for medical professionals who have to deal with many myths and prejudices.

Educational messages conveyed over a generation predetermine the difficult and slow rejection of irrational practices resulting from group pressure, prejudices, attitudes in the community and related myths regarding the upbringing of children that are important for the young mothers.

The study is a pilot one. Some of the main tasks of this study are:

1) To support the raising of children in a family environment;

2) To support the proper neuropsychological development of children by promoting good parenting practices;

3) To ensure the emotional and social development of the child and to reduce the risk of abandonment and abuse by supporting the development of attachment between children and mothers;

4) To promote positive methods of education;

The results of this study show that a vacuum is observed in terms of access of mothers to quality professional advice and health education. The practice for home visiting of healthcare professionals to Roma mothers was terminated for the purpose of implementing health preventive and educational programmes.

The lack of adequate educational programmes with appropriate scope aimed at preparing Roma mothers for the risks involved in child development, the importance of healthy nutrition, as well as other aspects of upbringing are key to Roma child health in Bulgaria.

There is a language barrier between mothers and health professionals due to the poor level of language skills in Bulgarian, which is not the first language for most of them.