Darlington'S Social Services chief is bound for Romania to asses the country's orphanages.

Colin Morris will spend six days from July 7 evaluating the orphanages funded by charitable organisations, including the BBC's Blue Peter appeal.

The Darlington Borough Council social services director is one of three experts reporting to the European Children's Trust on whether the orphanages are value for money, the quality of care, and their sustainability.

Mr Morris said: "It will be interesting and probably a bit traumatic. I don't think it will be brilliant, but I expect there will have been some progress since the orphanages first came to the world's attention about eight years ago.

"We will do some nose-to- nose exploration of the orphanages to get a feel of the quality, and work with the government agencies and charities on the ground to make sure they have some ideas about sustainability."

He said that after the crisis in Romania following the fall of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, it was important that the large numbers of orphans were given refuge in the orphanages.

But now there was a move towards breaking them into smaller units for better care