"The twins I saw will spend their lives staring at ceilings": Bulgaria's abandoned children

It was something about the twins that got to me; after seeing so many baby institutions and children’s homes, I had almost grown used to abandoned children in ranks of cots, staring at the ceiling. The twins — a boy and a girl of six — were set apart; pale, twisted, both with cerebral palsy. Their mother left them in the institution on the day their father had kicked her out for ‘only being able to have crippled children’. I reached into the girl’s cot to hold her hand, and her steady gaze held mine. I bent over to hold her brother’s foot, and felt like a lightning rod between them. But the missing link is their mother.

Bulgaria has the highest rate of institutionalised children in Europe, more than 8,000 in 32 buildings, many in the most inaccessible parts of the country. I have been going there for five years, with the Bulgarian Abandoned Children’s Trust, which, along with other NGOs, is trying to change things.