Origins of the Older Orphan Crisis
In the early to mid ‘90s, foreign reports estimated mortality rates in state-run orphanages at 80% to 95%. Conditions were extremely poor: no indoor plumbing, extremely poor sanitation, poor quality nutrition, babies fed just sugar and water by a spoon. Staff training was non-existent, and medical care was minimal. Disabilities were met with fear, ignorance, and sometimes disgust.
A lot has changed since then, in fact, almost everything has changed. In 1995 when I began my first adoption people equated Chinese orphans with healthy, though often very delayed and malnourished, baby girls. Today the reality is quite different and has been for some time. Consider two interesting trends :
Starting in 1992, outside influence began to impact the mainland orphanages, one place at a time. Childcare concepts from Mother’s Choice(1) in HongKong came to Nanning and soon after one of the first non-governmental orphan care programs was begun. Initially children were placed in local foster families to address the issues of overcrowding and too few caregivers, followed by the Mother’s Love foster home where at-risk infants could receive medical care and nurturing on their way to permanent families, thus facilitating the first international adoptions.
At about the same time, David Gotts, a Canadian businessman, had his life forever changed as he experienced firsthand the hopelessness of meeting the medical needs of orphans. In 1993 International China Concern(2) partnered with an orphanage in Hunan Province.
Despite the absence of specific medical needs among most of the early adoptees, the developmental and emotional state of the baby and toddler girls was quite shocking. While grappling with the needs of her newly adopted daughter, Jenny Bowen found she could not forget about the children left behind, and a year later she founded Half the Sky(3) to begin the long process of bringing child development practices and training to China’s orphanages.
In 1999, an expat couple living in Beijing adopted a baby girl, and for hundreds of orphans across China life would never be the same. In 2000, Dr. Joyce and Robin Hill began fostering babies with severe medical issues, and Hope Foster Home(4) soon followed. While Mother’s Love’s focused on improving general care, with Dr. Hill’s medical background, Hope Foster Home truly brought hope to orphans with critical medical needs and pioneered the model for medical foster homes.
As international adoption grew, awareness of the need for advanced medical care within the orphanages continued to grow. In 2003 Love Without Boundaries(5) was founded as an informal group of adoptive parents endeavored to obtain medical care for a single child. From there it has expanded into one of the most well-known orphan care organizations serving children from all over China with surgeries and medical treatments, post-surgery healing homes, local foster care, developmental preschools inside orphanages and eventually family preservation efforts by providing medical treatments for children at risk for abandonment.
The good news
There is much good news in all of this, as you can imagine, lives saved, care improved, families maintained. Best of all has been the response of the Chinese welfare system in adopting many of the practices introduced by these organizations, adapting their training and care methods and expanding the number of children available for adoption.
With adoptions rising significantly from 2000 to 2005, both healthy girls as well as boys and girls with medical needs being adopted, the overall health status improving and basic care levels improving rapidly, it would be easy to assume that orphanages are emptying and the problems of the past have been solved.
… and unintended consequences.
As you would hope and expect, as the level of care in orphanages increased, not only did healthy girls benefit, but so did children with medical conditions such as cerebral palsy, cleft lip and palate, and Down Syndrome. The medical interventions improved survival rates for children with heart defects, spina bifida, epilepsy, and other treatable conditions.
What has been less expected perhaps is the dramatic change in the population in the children’s welfare institutes. While there isn’t any evidence I am aware of that abandonment rates of special needs children have increased, the survival rates of the most fragile and vulnerable have changed dramatically. Consequently, children who were most likely to die in infancy are now surviving – and rapidly overwhelming a social welfare system unaccustomed and unprepared for the needs of school age children, teens and young adults with physical, mental and emotional disabilities. While prospective adoptive parents have been increasingly open to adopting children with medical needs, albeit most frequently minor or correctable ones, the supply of parents falls far short of the need.
So what about the children with less minor special needs? What about the children not chosen? What about the children for whom adoption was never an option? What about the children left behind? What did we save them FOR?
Why I am so passionate about volunteering with teens and young adults?
During my third adoption trip I was able to see firsthand the situation of older children living in the orphanage and realize how dramatically unprepared they were for living independently as they “aged out” both of the adoption program and out of the care of the welfare system.
So as we congratulate ourselves on the truly amazing accomplishments of the last two decades, I am burdened by the reality that faces those whose lives were saved as infants but have no hope for a meaningful future.
Is it hopeless? Of course not! In the wake of an increase in older child adoption, it has been heartening to hear more people in the adoption community voice the questions, “What happens to the ones who are not adopted? What can we do to help them?” And, just as the efforts of a small number of individuals grew and snowballed 20 years ago, I believe that same energy can be turned toward the children left behind.
What can you do? Partner with me and, through my efforts on the ground, invest in the lives of the teens and young adults in Hengyang.
1http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1295983/small-miracles-how-hundreds-babies-left-squalid-orphanage-found
2http://chinaconcern.org/our-story
3http://onesky.org/about-onesky/our-story/
4 http://hopefosterhome.com/aboutus/
A lot has changed since then, in fact, almost everything has changed. In 1995 when I began my first adoption people equated Chinese orphans with healthy, though often very delayed and malnourished, baby girls. Today the reality is quite different and has been for some time. Consider two interesting trends :
- The orphan population in institutions appears to be growing, not declining despite thousands of adoptions and fewer healthy infants being abandoned – how is that possible?
- The children in orphanages are both boys and girls with moderate to severe special needs, why?
Starting in 1992, outside influence began to impact the mainland orphanages, one place at a time. Childcare concepts from Mother’s Choice(1) in HongKong came to Nanning and soon after one of the first non-governmental orphan care programs was begun. Initially children were placed in local foster families to address the issues of overcrowding and too few caregivers, followed by the Mother’s Love foster home where at-risk infants could receive medical care and nurturing on their way to permanent families, thus facilitating the first international adoptions.
At about the same time, David Gotts, a Canadian businessman, had his life forever changed as he experienced firsthand the hopelessness of meeting the medical needs of orphans. In 1993 International China Concern(2) partnered with an orphanage in Hunan Province.
Despite the absence of specific medical needs among most of the early adoptees, the developmental and emotional state of the baby and toddler girls was quite shocking. While grappling with the needs of her newly adopted daughter, Jenny Bowen found she could not forget about the children left behind, and a year later she founded Half the Sky(3) to begin the long process of bringing child development practices and training to China’s orphanages.
In 1999, an expat couple living in Beijing adopted a baby girl, and for hundreds of orphans across China life would never be the same. In 2000, Dr. Joyce and Robin Hill began fostering babies with severe medical issues, and Hope Foster Home(4) soon followed. While Mother’s Love’s focused on improving general care, with Dr. Hill’s medical background, Hope Foster Home truly brought hope to orphans with critical medical needs and pioneered the model for medical foster homes.
As international adoption grew, awareness of the need for advanced medical care within the orphanages continued to grow. In 2003 Love Without Boundaries(5) was founded as an informal group of adoptive parents endeavored to obtain medical care for a single child. From there it has expanded into one of the most well-known orphan care organizations serving children from all over China with surgeries and medical treatments, post-surgery healing homes, local foster care, developmental preschools inside orphanages and eventually family preservation efforts by providing medical treatments for children at risk for abandonment.
The good news
There is much good news in all of this, as you can imagine, lives saved, care improved, families maintained. Best of all has been the response of the Chinese welfare system in adopting many of the practices introduced by these organizations, adapting their training and care methods and expanding the number of children available for adoption.
With adoptions rising significantly from 2000 to 2005, both healthy girls as well as boys and girls with medical needs being adopted, the overall health status improving and basic care levels improving rapidly, it would be easy to assume that orphanages are emptying and the problems of the past have been solved.
… and unintended consequences.
As you would hope and expect, as the level of care in orphanages increased, not only did healthy girls benefit, but so did children with medical conditions such as cerebral palsy, cleft lip and palate, and Down Syndrome. The medical interventions improved survival rates for children with heart defects, spina bifida, epilepsy, and other treatable conditions.
What has been less expected perhaps is the dramatic change in the population in the children’s welfare institutes. While there isn’t any evidence I am aware of that abandonment rates of special needs children have increased, the survival rates of the most fragile and vulnerable have changed dramatically. Consequently, children who were most likely to die in infancy are now surviving – and rapidly overwhelming a social welfare system unaccustomed and unprepared for the needs of school age children, teens and young adults with physical, mental and emotional disabilities. While prospective adoptive parents have been increasingly open to adopting children with medical needs, albeit most frequently minor or correctable ones, the supply of parents falls far short of the need.
So what about the children with less minor special needs? What about the children not chosen? What about the children for whom adoption was never an option? What about the children left behind? What did we save them FOR?
Why I am so passionate about volunteering with teens and young adults?
During my third adoption trip I was able to see firsthand the situation of older children living in the orphanage and realize how dramatically unprepared they were for living independently as they “aged out” both of the adoption program and out of the care of the welfare system.
So as we congratulate ourselves on the truly amazing accomplishments of the last two decades, I am burdened by the reality that faces those whose lives were saved as infants but have no hope for a meaningful future.
Is it hopeless? Of course not! In the wake of an increase in older child adoption, it has been heartening to hear more people in the adoption community voice the questions, “What happens to the ones who are not adopted? What can we do to help them?” And, just as the efforts of a small number of individuals grew and snowballed 20 years ago, I believe that same energy can be turned toward the children left behind.
What can you do? Partner with me and, through my efforts on the ground, invest in the lives of the teens and young adults in Hengyang.
1http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1295983/small-miracles-how-hundreds-babies-left-squalid-orphanage-found
2http://chinaconcern.org/our-story
3http://onesky.org/about-onesky/our-story/
4 http://hopefosterhome.com/aboutus/