Can you blame him?

Photo from spiritofamerica.com

On April 1st, 2006, Spirit of America celebrated International Orphans Day in Basrah by giving presents to 250 orphaned children and 80 widows.

After reading the previous blog entry, can you blame this young man for gripping his present as tightly as he can?

Orphans in Bagdad

Photo from cbsnews.com





Welcome to an orphanage in Bagdad, where 24 special-needs orphans were found tied to cribs.

Originally, boys and girls were housed together, but then someone separated the boys and sent them to an orphanage with no governmental oversight.

Witness their condition:
- Naked
- Starving
- On the concrete floor
- Lying in their own waste
- In temperatures up to 120 degrees

Was the orphanage poor?
No, it was well-stocked with food. The central office of the facility was well-kept, in stark contrast to the feces-ridden squalor surrounding the children. Brand-new cribs found in storage still had plastic covering their unused mattresses. Clothing was folded neatly, designated to be sold at the black market, rather than worn by children.

But the caretaker of the facility followed his greed, rather than caring for the children with whom he had been entrusted. Staff members cooked only for themselves.

What will be the future for Iraqi orphans?
As a CBS reporter has commented, "How a nation cares for its most vulnerable is one of the most important benchmarks for health in any society."

Last year, the United Nations estimated that there were about 40,000 orphan children in Iraq. That number is steadily rising... The current war has cost many children one or both parents.

In Iraqi culture, orphans are often scorned. Islamic sharia law forbids foreigners from adopting Iraqi children. It also disallows Iraqis from giving adopted children their family name and inheritance.

I would like to know if there is any way around this. Even in the best of the Iraqi orphanages, the children within are starving for love and attention, desperate for human contact. During an NBC interview, one little girl called the cameraman "Daddy."

Without loving intervention, these children might grow up to be future terrorists. Quammara al-Janni, coordinator of orphan programs through the Red Crescent (the Arab Red Cross), reminded reporters that Saddam Hussein was raised as an orphan.

Breakdown in families, breakdown in communication
In April 2007, while working to reunite family members, social workers discovered that 100 Iraqi street children thought to be orphans (86 boys, 33 girls) actually had family members somewhere in Iraq who were willing to take them in. In most cases, the parents had died, and children didn't know how to contact relatives.

This might be an important first step to take: Trying to reconnect children with extended family members in Iraq...

Sources:
Engel, Richard. Iraqi orphans face uncertain future. NBC Nightly News, May 26, 2006.
Logan, Lara. Clinging to life in a Bagdad orphanage. CBS News, June 18, 2007.
Potter, Beth. Social workers launch effort to find homes for orphans, others. USA Today, May 31, 2005.
Street orphans of Bagdad: Thousands of homeless kids live on the street in the war zone, without shelter or aid. CBS News, May 8, 2007.
Tarabay, Jamie. Help for Iraqi orphans falls on charities. NPR, April 8, 2007.
Troops discover Iraqi orphanage nightmare. CBS News, June 19, 2007.

Whole Child International

Kudos to 34-year-old Karen Gordon for using her $1.3 million divorce settlement to start a nonprofit organization to improve orphanages.

The word "orphanage" has become increasingly unpopular over the past 20 years. Newt Gingrich went under fire in 1994 after suggesting the return of Boys Town orphanages to care for abused and neglected children.

Gordon's initial offer to help United Nations officials explore how to improve care in orphanages was turned away. The rationale was that the World Health Organization and World Bank oppose putting children in orphanages, so "why bother fixing them?"

There is the ideal -- and then, there is reality.

The fact is that most of the world's 16.2 million orphans will spend their entire childhoods in an orphanage.

In 2006:
Only 6,500 of China's million orphans were adopted.
Only 3,700 of Russia's 700,000 orphans were adopted.
Only 43 of Nicaragua's 6,000 orphans were adopted.

Gordon's efforts to improve the standards of living for the many children who reside in orphanages was inspired by Hungarian pediatrician, Dr. Emmi Pikler.

The Pikler Institute in Bedapest was founded in 1946 on the belief that orphaned children can thrive only if they are nurtured with consistent care. Instead of rotating caregivers, Pikler has each one looking after the same group of 7-8 children for several years.

The care and setting at the Pikler Institute are designed to facilitate the development of attachment and security. Infants are free to play, rather than being confined to cribs all day. Caregivers are encouraged to talk frequently with the children, in order to facilitate bonding.

Gordon's quest to improve institutional care has taken her to 51 orphanages in 11 countries. She witnessed the outcomes of children were deprived of consistent, loving attention. One of her many initiatives in order to create positive long-term change is to supplement the pay and raise funding for Nicaraguan orphanage staff.

In the United States, we often use the term "children's home," since many children's parents are alive but unwilling or unable to care for them.

Like orphanages, children's homes have become a taboo subject... despite the fact that at least 94,650 foster children were housed in institutional settings in 2005.

Just as there are not enough adoptive parents for all of the world's orphans, there are definitely not enough foster parents in the world.

Source:
Dolan, Kerry. Creative Giving: Adopting a Crusade. Feb. 12, 2007, Forbes.
National Council for Adoption.
UNICEF
U.S. Department of State

Family Preservation vs. Child Safety

In response to Hillary Clinton's denouncing Newt Gingrich's 1994 proposal to bring back orphananges, Richard McKenzie, who grew up in an orphanage himself, said "If the nation had few problems with its current child welfare system, no one would consider bringing back orphanages. But the country's child care problems are grave and getting worse...

He continued, "Our child welfare system today is guided by the idealogy of 'family preservation.' Before taking children from unfit parents, we wait until they have been gravely and repeatedly abused. Then, after a short respite during which we seem to expect magical reforms, we return the children to be neglected and abused once again." - Richard B. McKenzie, National Review, 9-28-98

I'm going to start this blog by taking a risk and stating my true feelings: The emperor has no clothes. The more I research the current foster care system, the more concerned I am that in many ways and for many children, it is worse than the foster group facilities where I resided between the ages of 12-16.

Why would I say this? Let outline some of the challenges I faced and how I don't think those problems are being addressed by current foster care. I'll start with two, for this post:

1.) No incest taboo. When I spent time in an all-girls group home, a male houseparent made a pass at me. I was fourteen years old, and blossoming. He felt attraction, and since I wasn't a family member of his, there was no incest taboo.

However, his attraction to me did not culminate in sexual abuse. Why? Well, because of the group home setting, it would have been hard for him to act on his feelings. There were always other girls around. There was his wife and the other set of houseparents around. So... I got lucky.

What if I had been in a foster home and he had been my foster father? What if he had had more time alone with me? If there had been actual touching on his part and I told a social worker, would I have been believed? See #2.

2.) The turnover rate for social workers... I spoke recently with a foster mother who has had five different social workers for one little boy in her care within a period of six months. When the fifth stranger came to visit the home, the little boy freaked out, thinking that he was going to be taken away.

How could a child or teenager possibly build trust with so many changing faces? Also, once a child or teen spends time in foster care, they tend to get "labeled." If the files says that a child might be troubled, it is less likely that the child will be believed if he or she reports abusive treatment.

Also, the social workers aren't coming from the angle of being deeply invested in any one particular child. Foster care is an underfunded system. Most social workers have a large caseload. They don't have much time to concentrate on any one child's particular needs.

I've spent a lot of time lately meeting with social workers and interviewing them. Some of them have said things that let me know that they are coming from an entirely different perspective than I am:

• “I just need to find a bed for these children.”


• “It’s late-afternoon on Friday, and I just want to go home.”


• “This child is almost 18 anyway. Once she turns 18, she is no longer the state’s problem.”

Let me state right now these children are all the state's problem. They are our nation’s problem. If we do not build into neglected and abused children when they are young, it will cost us in the long run. Would we rather spend money on prisons than on preventative measures?