Transcript

STACEY

How are you? I'm Stacey.

Fanda and Zsuzsa are two social workers. They monitor mainly Roma families.

Thank you so much for your time today. I really, really appreciate it. Cold out there. Very chilly.

I'm going to be meeting one of the women currently being monitored to see if she can keep her baby. I'm Stacey. How do you do?

ZSUZANNA:

[SPEAKING HUNGARIAN] This is the smallest space, but it’s the easiest to heat.

STACEY

And you had your baby just two weeks ago?

ZSUZANNA

[SPEAKING HUNGARIAN] Yes a little boy born two minutes after midnight.

STACEY

So where is your baby now?

FANDA

[SPEAKING HUNGARIAN] Unfortunately, Zsuzanna has already had four sons taken away so she’s trying to avoid that with this baby.

ZSUZSA

[SPEAKING HUNGARIAN] The biggest problem was that the living conditions were very poor and the children were neglected and badly taken care of. What she has to provie now, is that she can raise the baby in this small space.

STACEY

You have four boys that have been removed? How are they doing? How are they getting on without you?

ZSUZANNA

[SPEAKING HUNGARIAN] Well not easily. They’d give anything to come home.

ZSUZSA

[SPEAKING HUNGARIAN] Sorting it out doesn’t sound certain at all.

STACEY

She seems quite cooperative.

FANDA

[SPEAKING HUNGARIAN] Yes, the mother is friendly and cooperative, but you’ve still got to watch out. It’s deceptive.

ZSUZSA

[SPEAKING HUNGARIAN] The woman outwardly seems to be cooperative because she’s afraid of losing her children, but underneath it’s not quite the same. They’re good at talking, but they never actually do anything they say.

FANDA

[SPEAKING HUNGARIAN] I mean they think differently for sure, I mean they have different values.

STACEY

It feels like Fanda and Zsuzsa have a them and us approach to the Roma. When you look at the number of removals taking place throughout Hungary, it's a fact that most of the kids in care homes are Roma. That's a fact. But why is that?

ZSUZSA

[SPEAKING HUNGARIAN] Do you think we judge them differently?

STACEY

This isn't a personal attack. This isn't me saying you are doing an awful job. I imagine that you believe you are doing what's best for those kids. But the circumstances are far from ideal here.

ZSUZSA

[SPEAKING HUNGARIAN] And what would be the ideal situation?

STACEY

To try and keep kids with their families.

ZSUZSA

[SPEAKING HUNGARIAN] But it gets to a certain point where you can’t do that anymore. Very often they deny or hide the problem. They don’t admit to it. This kind of denial, this lack of responsibility for what they have done wrong is a very typical kind of response. It’s a way to put the blame on somebody else, to try and avoid taking the blame themselves.

STACEY

A lot of the problems seem to stem from poverty, for example, keeping the house clean. You need running water to be able to do that. And so many of these families haven't got that. They haven't even got a roof. The roof is caving in in some situations.

ZSUZSA

[SPEAKING HUNGARIAN] But this doesn’t necessarily only apply to them. It’s very hard for everyone. We live in a poor area.

STACEY

How many white Hungarians live like the Romas do here? The vast majority of people living in acute poverty here are Roma.

ZSUZSA

[SPEAKING HUNGARIAN] Do you think we treat them differently? Do you think we would remove children from Gypsy families sooner?

STACEY

The honest answer is I can't be sure and I don't know at this point.

ZSUZSA

[SPEAKING HUNGARIAN] Is there or isn’t there discrimination? I would say there isn’t.

STACEY

You know, I'm not going to stand here and make out that every single Roma person I've spoken to have been perfect-- they've been perfect parents, and they've done nothing wrong, and it's purely circumstantial. That's not the case. Some of them, they do need to change their parenting and the conditions are far from ideal.

But what she doesn't seem to get, or where we disagree-- her and I-- is that so many of these issues seem to stem from poverty. I do think it's as straightforward as that. And she won't accept that. She thinks that the work is there and if they're willing, they'd go out, they'd get a job. I think that there are so many prejudices and there are so many ingrained stereotypes about the Roma community that that's not always possible.