In previous blogs a lot of mention is made of the orphanage industry: private individuals opening an ‘orphanage’, recruiting children and pocketing the money given by donors. This is a heinous practice and it must be stopped. However, the focus on this may have given the impression that privately-run institutions are the worst form of institutions around. If only that were true…
Over the past 12 years, I have visited privately-run, NGO-run, faith-based organisation-run and state-run institutions. Some of them part of the orphanage-industry; some large-scale, some small-scale; some better run than others. And I have to say that while I have seen some pretty terrible conditions in all of the various categories, including the orphanage-industry ones, without exception the very worst conditions I have come across – in a variety of countries – were always in the state-run institutions.
The conditions I have found in the worst of the state-run institutions were no longer in the category of ‘these children are lacking so much’, they were in the category of: ‘how do any of the children survive?’ (and many don’t).
The big difference between state-run and non-state-run institutions in many countries is that while the non-state-run institutions may not know what they are doing or may be looking for money more than anything else, they usually do have some idea of wanting to do something for the children. They often do not come close to providing what is needed, but they generally do make an effort to a certain extent. Plus, even when profit is the only aim, it is not a good business model when ‘your children’ keep dying and you keep having to pay off more child-finders and families to provide you with new children. So it is in the interest of the people running the institution to make an effort to keep the children alive.
State-run institutions are not trying to accomplish anything, much of the time. They did not choose to exist. They had no choice. The government demands there be a place where children without parental care can be stored, because there is international pressure to provide this. The people running the place have no influence over the amount of money they get to run the place, they have to make do with what they get, and they do not have the luxury of saying ‘we have no more beds’, they have to accept whomever is brought there. These factors complicate matters, but they are not at the heart of the worst excesses seen in state-run institutions.
The biggest problem is that in many countries the job of running one of these institutions does not go to the most competent or qualified person, it goes to someone with connections or someone who has the money to buy his way into the job. The same usually goes for the other positions to be filled. And then, once you have secured your government-job, in many countries you cannot be fired. This means that once you are in the job, all you need to do is show up and wait for your pension, nothing else.
These conditions mean that if you are in luck and someone’s cousin, who gets the job of running the institutions, really has a heart for the children in it, he usually has all the means at his disposal to create a high quality living environment (relatively speaking, as far as possible in institutional care) for the children, with good food, good clothes, plenty of caregivers and good stimulation. You see this happen, unexpectedly, from time to time, in between all the dismal places. However, as happens more often, if someone’s cousin could not care less, you see opulent offices, nice cars and horrendous living conditions for the children, with a lot of loss of life.
The disinterest you see in the caregivers in these places, cannot really be held against them. One caregiver is regularly made responsible for 20 or more children – for example Indian law states that 1 caregiver for 50 children is adequate in institutions – meaning they are not able to provide anything like adequate care, leading to children not doing well, either psychologically or health-wise, and sometimes dying. This is a hard thing to witness, and an even harder psychological burden to bear when you acknowledge that you are the one causing this situation for the children. In fact, that burden is too hard to bear for any human being, so the brain protects us against this realisation. In these kinds of circumstances – through no conscious choice – the brain flips a switch that dehumanises the children. The caregiver no longer feels she is dealing with human beings, she is just doing her job, going through the daily actions that she needs to do to keep that job. And she needs the job to feed her own family. This is the only way to survive for the caregiver. At the same time, it is a great danger to the children.
Even more than privately-run institutions, the state-run ones are a lethal danger to children, because of the system behind it. The situation has a veneer of being regulated and monitored, but underneath that, it is lawless and out of control.
Another reason why children should not be put in institutions. They should receive the support needed to stay with their families or be placed in other families instead.
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