I began a conversation with a friend the other day and mentioned that I was reading up on orphanages. His face went pale for a second, and his visceral reaction was of disgust.“Orphanages are horrible places,” he remarked, “terrible things happen in them.” Treading very lightly, I carefully asked if he was a product of the system. He responded in the negative. “But I saw this horrible documentary on them.”
Two hours before, I was reading a book that said exactly the opposite. It spoke of a group of children that grew up in New York in the 1960s and still remained a surrogate family 30 years later.
Most people think of Charles Dickens when they hear the word “orphanage”. Many of them were horrible places, plagued by financial woes, lack of resources and overcrowding.
This is the problem with generalities. There may be good places and bad places. Good people and bad people. Good intentions and bad intentions.
UNICEF now suggests that everyone move into a home living situation. In the past, many orphanages were actually started because some foster parents were abusing the system. Jane Aronson, the CEO and Founder of Orphans Worldwide, thinks that orphanages should be downsized into more manageable sizes.
It isn’t the place of this blog to take a side. The GIOH, for instance, has evolved over the past 110 years into having girls living both on premises and in foster homes, but providing a framework to help them out.
Understanding why orphanages or other alternatives were founded is an integral part in understanding the role of the orphanage or other out-of-home child care today.
The change in orphan care today has to be a charge towards individuality. Each child is unique. There is no golden solution that is going to be for everyone.
