Moreni's hospital for handicapped children is some 60 miles north-west of Bucharest. The last mile of the journey is a gravel track; rainwaters have created mini-ravines in the sand. Suddenly the landscape is full of nodding oil donkeys - hundreds of them, 30 ft high triangles of steel, moving back and forth interminably. It is snowing. The hospital director is waiting at the gate, not best pleased. The sign in Romanian reads: "Closed to all visitors without permit. No foreigners allowed."
Not expecting her foreign visitor to speak Romanian, her greeting to the county council's director of child care is to the point. "Why did you bring him here?"
Familiar stone corridors. Familiar pungency. Familiar trepidation about what's coming next as we swing through the doors of the first ward.
Eighteen cots in the room at first guess. Wide eyes, staring eyes but clean pyjamas. Then the inevitable three or four children sitting in their cots, rocking back and forth, back and forth interminably.
The hospital director, Gheorgheta Beteringhe, complains first about material necessities - a lack of bleach, washing machines and spin dryers, and what she wouldn't give for a minibus to get some of her 188 charges, aged three to 18, out of the place from time time.
"Well in the last year we've had two children placed with foster families. Then after that we had another two placed and one more is waiting final approval. We have a plan for next year to have another two or three cases, for trial periods of three months placed with families. Not foster families but re-integrated with their own families. We'll be there to try and support them."
The numbers are not the significant thing. It's the aspiration, tangible proof of new hope for Romania's forgotten children. It's based on new laws - approved by the Romanian parliament six months ago and now having effect - together with substantial loans from the Council of Europe.
Cristian Tabacaru (29) is Romania's youngest-ever government minister, and first minister of child protection. He's a paediatrician. The significance of the new laws, he says, is that they provide a framework for change. At their most general level they aim to replace the orphanages with alternatives based on family care. For orphanages read group homes, re-integration with natural families or fostering and adoption.
Tabecaru says: "Governments can do a lot of things but they can't raise children." From now on each of Romania's 41 county councils - and five sectors in Bucharest - will be responsible for child care instead of three remote government ministries in Bucharest.
According to Tabecaru's figures there are around 100,000 abandoned children in state institutions in Romania. At one end of that spectrum of need about 10 per cent are under three. At the other, almost half are more than 11. The minister has set targets of reducing the total numbers by 40,000 in the next five years.
He's speaking in a children's ward of the Caraiman Hospital in Bucharest. There are 46 babies here who have been abandoned. The only thing wrong with them is the poverty of their mothers.
Tabecaru goes to a cot and sits a child up. She slumps down as soon as he removes the pillow from her back. "You see at three months a child in a family would be able to sit up with some support. Our studies suggest that a child of six months who's spent life in an institution will be 50 per cent behind normal development."
So, with new babies abandoned daily is the 40,000 target realistic? "It's not a question of realistic or not. Communism has given Romania one of the most refined systems for damaging children. It's impossible to continue like that. We have no choice . We have to create alternatives to putting children into institutions."
Within the next few months Tabecaru will have some European money to help him with his daunting task. The Council of Europe has agreed a $12 million loan for Romania to help fund the reform of child care. The terms of the loans were agreed in principle late in November but the main condition is that they must be matched in full by the Romanian government.
At present Romania has sponsors in the governments of Spain and Switzerland and in the World Bank, but Tabacaru is confident the full amount can be matched and his office is preparing a draft for the approval of the Romanian parliament this month.
The head of child care services in the Council of Europe is Thomas Kattau. He says the moves are encouraging but must be viewed with a sense of proportion: "There are still big problems to be faced which need more than loans."
Nonetheless he approves of setting the target to reduce the number in the orphanages by 40,000 in five years: "I think it is important they have adopted a figure because if you don't adopt figures you don't have a goal to aim for."
Of course its easy to be sceptical. Street children in any Romanian city are easy to find. But most journalists have not met Mrs Rodica Tokay. She's one of Romania's new directors of social work for the county of Arad, in the far north-west of Romania. She was one of the first to build a pilot project for social services in Arad - five years ago. Rodica Tokay's social workers have placed more than 400 children with families since then.
Rodica Tokay smokes like a chimney, and never takes water in her whiskey. When she tells you her aim is to destroy the orphanages you stay told. In the last year between 50 and 60 children have been found foster families in Arad. One of them was Monica Bairam. Monica will be four in February. When she was five months old an English couple, Adrian and Bernadette Mooney from Wokingham, near London, paid $6,000 to take Monica from her parents - unmarried gypsy teenagers. The Mooneys were caught at the Hungarian border trying to smuggle the child to England. The Romanian courts jailed them for two years but after a presidential pardon they were released. At the time of the kidnapping many suggested it would have been better for Monica if the Mooney's had succeeded. Not Rodica Tokay. It was she who finally arranged for Monica to be placed with gypsy foster parents who are now waiting to adopt her.
Conditions in the Romanian orphanages have improved greatly in the last five years but the outstretched arms of the toddlers that always come running towards you are some sort of living proof that nothing can compare with the love of a family. Monica has found one. I met Monica with her foster mother, Ana, in a park in Arad. Then we went for lunch.
After days parading round orphanages these hours were like a gift from God, as the Romanians would say. But you don't need to be a believer to hear the laughter, listen to the nursery rhymes being sung, witness the cuddles or watch love finding a way. Monica's smile is a joy to behold. It's also a reminder of Romania's new determination to care for its own. Forty thousand others await their turn.
Bob Wylie is a journalist with the BBC.