In Guatemala 75% of parents with children in institutions surveyed said that with a little support, they would be able to take care of their own children. These are the things we need to look for. In order to know how to get children out of institutions, it is helpful to find out how they got there. This will give a starting point to finding out what needs to be done to prevent the children from ending up in institutions.
Continue reading “Why Are They There?”Tag: #childrenwithdisabilities
Children with Disabilities
A five-year-old girl, who weighs 6kg and spend 20-22 hours a day in a baby crib that is a bit too small for her, at an adoption centre where she has lived for over 4 years now. All because she has cerebral palsy.
Today is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. A good time to take a moment to look at the situation of children with disabilities in institutions. Unfortunately, it is not a pretty one.
Continue reading “Children with Disabilities”Additional Risks of Institutionalisation
In previous blogs, we have looked at children being pulled out of their families to fill ‘orphanages’ to cater to the voluntourism industry and the orphanage industry (HERE and HERE). We have looked at ways children are exploited both knowingly and unknowingly in institutions (HERE). And we have looked at how their growth, health and brain development, as well as their chances of successful independent adult lives is put on the line by not having their essential basic needs met for many years (HERE). That seems like too much to handle already, and it really is.
Unfortunately, there is more. When children live in institutions, they are much, much more vulnerable to abuse than children are in general.
Continue reading “Additional Risks of Institutionalisation”“Intellectual Disability Among Children Everywhere”
This week the latest manual, the fourth in the series ‘Children Everywhere’, has come out. Originally, it was written for the NGO Orphanage Projects, giving advice to people running institutions on how to provide better care to children with intellectual disabilities. The writing and publishing of a manual do not happen in the space of a day or a week, so it was written well before any plans of folding Orphanage Projects and starting Why Family-Based Solutions occurred to me.
This does not mean that the book is no longer relevant, however. First of all, there are still many, many institutions caring for children with intellectual disabilities, without necessarily being quite aware of the needs of these children. But secondly, although written for institutional situations, the manual can play an important role in family-based care too.
Continue reading ““Intellectual Disability Among Children Everywhere””