You are in your late teens or early twenties. Your first job hasn’t worked out. You can’t afford the flat-share. You are about to become homeless. So, what do you do?

You go home to mum and dad. Isn’t that what you would want your child to do?

But some young people don’t have that option. Especially not young people brought up in care in Romania. Emil’s story illustrates perfectly the need for such a place of safety, a place to which he could return.

When he was 11, the woman who ran the foster home in which he had lived for eight years took ill, and he was transferred to a second foster family. At 18 he went to Floresti, near Cluj to learn to be a baker. That course was disrupted by the pandemic and lockdown and when he finished, he couldn’t find a job. He went to Bucharest, and then to the Netherlands where he worked for seven months in an auto parts factory. Then to the Czech Republic where he worked in a shop, then back to Romania where he found himself homeless.

It was a social worker who put him in touch with Blythswood’s Daniel Centre.

“I felt so insecure, having no place to stay,” Emil admits. Luiza, who was then the social worker at the Daniel Centre, counselled him and taught him how to budget. Emil felt ready to go it alone, left the Daniel Centre and again took a job at an auto parts factory. The factory closed, he became homeless and his former foster family didn’t want to know him.

“I’m so glad that Emil came back to the Daniel Centre,” says staff member Dani Ciupe. “He had made good progress the first time and he was ready to try again.”

Now 23, Emil has had a roof over his head and wise mentors to talk to while he trains and works in supermarket security.

“Emil is a hard worker,” Dani says. “He wants to do more baking but right now is in charge of a security team and ready to take responsibility.”

“I hope to live independently,” Emil says. “I want to find a girlfriend and have a family of my own.”