Let’s start with a little introduction, a little more personal than the ‘About’ page. Who am I and how did I get here?
That’s a really good question and I will fight the impulse to become too philosophical or existentialist in answering it. So I’ll start with the first part. I am Florence Koenderink, a Dutch woman who has lived in Scotland for the past several years and who works all over the world, wherever I’m asked to go. The more formal details on that you can look up on the ‘About’ page.
In a more personal sense, I had years of childcare experience in families when in 2007 I went to China for a year to volunteer for an American organisation running medical children’s homes there. During that year I discovered that the combination of my basic understanding of children’s universal needs, my natural tendency to analyse situations and find solutions for obstacles, and my ability to absorb new knowledge and skills to then make new connections and links, were all major assets when it came to improving the care given to children in institutions. Plus I learned a lot about the specific needs and obstacles of institutional childcare, about the resource drain of voluntourism and about some of the conditions that caused the institutionalisation of children. I also discovered that without investing more money, just through sharing information, modelling good practice and giving training I could help improve the chance of survival and the quality of life of the children in the children’s homes. This was an important discovery, because I didn’t (and don’t) have any money to speak of.
After this year I decided that this was something I wanted to continue doing this work and that is how Orphanage Projects was thought up, though it would be a little while longer before I nailed down that name. In the past couple of years I have often been announced (without my prompting) as an institutional childcare expert or as an expert in working with children with complex special needs, when holding a training or seminar.
Over the past (almost) 12 years I have visited and spend time in dozens of childcare institutions, spread over five countries on three continents. Through those experiences I have become aware – probably slightly ahead of the global consciousness that is currently spreading about the issue, but not by much – of many very serious downsides to institutional childcare. Not only have I personally witnessed that tragic reality of the voluntourism and orphanage industry, where children are ripped away from their families and placed in institutions just to be able to coax the money out of the pockets of rich foreigners. I have also had the unfortunate privilege of witnessing the permanent damage done to the brain development of even children who spent a just a few years in relatively very well-run children’s homes with very low child-to-caregiver ratios, with serious repercussions even after they were adopted.
The combination of all these things has made me look more and more towards the side of moving towards deinstitutionalisation, also nudging the institutions that I was working with in that direction, for the past 2-3 years. It has led to the writing of ‘How to Help, not Harm’, a book that you can find on the ‘Publications’ page. And to the start of a major research project with the working title of ‘world list’ through which I have been gathering information about the alternative care situation and related subjects for all countries in the world. I am hoping to write and bring out the report coming out of that data before the end of this year.
So, in short, that is how I got here. Seeing childcare institutionalisation for what it is and looking for ways to more effectively help the children who currently live in institutions and those who are at risk of ending up in one, have recently led me to decide to fold Orphanage Projects and to start Why Family-Based Solution. In the hope of being able to continue to make a difference in the lives of the children, and hopefully in a more effective way.
Please feel free to contact me, or to leave a comment, about what you would like to know more about.