Wait a minute, you might say, didn’t you say in the overview that some children need to be taken away from their families for their own protection? Because they are being abused or neglected, or because they are surrounded by domestic violence or substance abuse. Nothing to be done there…
While it is true that there will always be some children who need to be removed from their families for their protection, this is actually only a very, very small group… IF support systems are in place. Even when parents are facing serious problems or are really struggling to raise their children, very often it is possible to help out in ways that allow the child to stay with the family, safely.
Parents who abuse or neglect their children, generally struggle with very serious problems of their own. These could be trauma or untreated mental health issues, alcohol or substance abuse, or quite simply being overwhelmed by parenthood and not knowing how to deal with the children, because they have never had a good role model. Sometimes it is safest to temporarily place the children in foster care, while working with the parents to get them the help they need to be able to cope again. However, sometimes help can also be provided while the children live at home. For example, by providing day-care, so that they parents have some time in the day to recover and to work on their problems, allowing them to deal with the children again at the end of the day.
Helping the parents to become part of support groups with other parents, where they get tips on how to handle challenging situations with their children and where they can share their fears and frustrations, can also be very helpful.
In situations where the problem is the physical health or impairment of the parent(s), rather than taking the children away from their family, it is also entirely possible (and cost-effective) to provide free or subsidised care at home. This way both the parent(s) and the children can get the assistance they need, while still being able to live together and contributing to each other’s life joy.
This leaves parental absence, and interestingly this does not (or hardly ever) refer to parents dying, because in practice almost everywhere in the world, the vast majority of full orphans are absorbed into their extended family or immediate community. With parental absence I am referring to parents who have been imprisoned and parents who have left as migrant workers in an attempt to make enough money to feed their family.
In the next blog, I will address various things that can be done to provide poverty relief, this is also relevant to the group of absent parents. When there is less extreme poverty, there tends to be less crime (it does not eliminate crime, but it does reduce crime committed out of desperation, in order to get food). With poverty relief, fewer parents will also feel forced to travel a long way to make enough money to keep their children alive.
So the answer is, yes, there are rare cases when there is no other option than to have the child live away from his family for a while, but when proper support and community services are in place, this is not very often. And amazingly, providing these services is a lot cheaper than providing institutional care.
The next three blogs will address the issues mentioned in the previous three blogs and look at what can be – and already is being – done to avoid the separation of children and parents.
Please share this blog, to help spread awareness.