I have repeatedly written about the ‘orphanage industry’ and how funding and/or volunteering in ‘orphanages’ causes children to be separated from their parents and to end up living in institutions. You can read about that HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE. I have made the following claim many times:
Removing volunteering in and donations to ‘orphanages’ as a significant source of income, and directing that money towards family strengthening and community-based services will be very helpful in moving the trend away from institutional care and towards family-based care, giving it a big push in the right direction. It will prevent the unnecessary separation of many thousands of children from their families. It will help prevent the psychological harm caused to children by the serial abandonment by volunteers, and the even greater harm to the general psychological and neurological development of children caused by institutionalisation.
To most people this seems rather abstract and theoretical, hard to know whether it could really be that bad. And how would one find out for sure? As it turns out, all you need to do is throw a major pandemic into the mix.
Despite the crisis it has created, the Covid-19 pandemic has provided us with one thing: it has shown us that when the flow of volunteers and money dries up, children are sent home to their families again. This has happened in various countries around the world, on a large scale: tens of thousands of children.
For the most part, this was not good news. There was no assessment, preparation, or ongoing monitoring and support involved in reunifying children with their families, they were simply sent home from one day to the next. It is irresponsible to do this because it can put children at serious risk in a variety of ways. Organisations have had to scramble to get support and services in place to help these children and their families.
However, despite the problems with the execution, the point still stands: it has been proven that children who have been removed from their families in order to lure volunteers and bring in donations are returned to their families when keeping them is no longer profitable.
This should give everyone food for thought about what they want to do with their donations and offers to volunteer when the pandemic, or at least most of its restrictions, have passed. It would really be a shame to create conditions that would lead to children being taken away from their families again by allowing people to profit from institutionalising them after the pandemic.
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