Petre

Maria

Cosmin

Katia

Ilie

Ionut Story 

Ionuţ aged 13 has been cared for by the Hospice Casa Sperantei Home Care team in Bucharest for 2 years. He was born with Cerebral Palsy. His mother suffered from a severe depression and committed suicide only three months after his birth. One year later Ionuţ’s father remarried and his step mother, Mihaela, cares for him very lovingly.
Cerebral palsy is caused by damage to the motor control centers of the developing brain, resulting in limits in movement often accompanied by disturbances of sensation, depth perception and communication ability.
Ionuţ sits in a wheelchair and goes to a special school. But he hasn’t many friends, so he likes the Hospice children’s workshops and the Summer Holiday Camp available to all patient children with special needs. He is especially delighted when he has conversations with the adults, because of his grandmother who likes having him around when she comments about the political events in the country. He loves to hear and talk about politics and he often says that he would like to became the president of Romania one day!
The family consists of 2 more girls, Georgiana and Stefania, 11 and 4 years old, trying to help him wherever they can. “It is difficult to raise a child with physical disability like Cerebral Palsy,” his stepmother says. “I would like for Ionuţ to get better, to get out of that wheelchair to walk, be strong and independent.” Mihaela has to carry him a lot and as he is getting more and more heavy, she now has severe back and spinal cord problems.
Hospice Casa Sperantei’s home care team sees the family once a week. The pediatric nurse, Flori, measures the blood pressure of Ionuţ, prevents upcoming secondary infections and helps with the bladder problem Ionuţ sometimes has. The social worker, Gina, is consulting the family and the patient regarding their mental, emotional, monetary and daily problems and provides the connection with different specialists who are able to help them.