New Interview with J.K. Rowling about Child Welfare

While in Romania, author J.K. Rowling gave a new interview to the Associated Press, discussing her concerns about child welfare and her involvement in the Children’s High Level Group. Some excerpts from this interview are now online, and during the course of this interview Jo reiterated what prompted her to become active in helping to promote better standards for children in Eastern European orphanages. She speaks movingly about her involvement in the campaign and the affect on meeting some of these children has had on her.

” Rowling recalls with tears in her eyes how an institutionalised boy gave her paintings that had won him first prize in a talent competition yesterday. The boy said he met his birth mother last year — but that she died three months later.

In a hushed voice, she also tells of six abandoned babies she saw the day before in a maternity hospital.
‘” I have a baby at home and again that is something that touches you,” she said. “It’s shocking although I understand the reasons these children have been abandoned are not the simple reasons that many people in Western Europe may assume. This is a complex social issue and it will need complex social solutions.”