tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/orphans-15294/articlesOrphans – The Conversation2023-11-14T13:26:24Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2119952023-11-14T13:26:24Z2023-11-14T13:26:24ZMusic painted on the wall of a Venetian orphanage will be heard again nearly 250 years later<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557160/original/file-20231101-23-zmwffr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C22%2C3024%2C2240&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The music room of the Ospedaletto is known for its remarkable acoustics.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marica S. Tacconi</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Imagine Lady Gaga or Elton John teaching at an orphanage or homeless shelter, offering daily music lessons. </p>
<p>That’s what took place at Venice’s four <a href="https://imagesofvenice.com/ospedali-grandi/">Ospedali Grandi</a>, which were charitable institutions that took in the needy – including orphaned and foundling girls – from the 16th century to the turn of the 19th century. Remarkably, all four Ospedali hired some of the greatest musicians and composers of the time, such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Antonio-Vivaldi">Antonio Vivaldi</a> and <a href="https://guides.lib.fsu.edu/composerofthemonth">Nicola Porpora</a>, to provide the young women – known as the “putte” – with a superb music education.</p>
<p>In the summer of 2019, while in Venice on a research trip, I had the opportunity to visit the Ospedale di Santa Maria dei Derelitti, more commonly known as the Ospedaletto, or “Little Hospital,” because it was the smallest of the four Ospedali Grandi. </p>
<p>As a musicologist <a href="https://arts.psu.edu/faculty/marica-tacconi/">specializing in the music of early modern Venice</a>, I was especially excited to visit one of the hidden gems of the city: the <a href="https://www.gioiellinascostidivenezia.it/en/the-jewels/complesso-dell-ospedaletto/">Ospedaletto’s music room</a>, which was built in the mid-1770s.</p>
<p>I had heard about its beauty and perfect acoustics. So when a colleague and friend, classical singer <a href="https://venicemusicproject.it/en/liesl-odenweller/">Liesl Odenweller</a>, suggested we go together, I was delighted. I also secretly hoped Liesl would feel inclined to sing in the space, so I could experience the pure acoustics of the room. </p>
<p>Little did I know that I would encounter music that hasn’t been performed in nearly 250 years.</p>
<h2>Clues on the walls</h2>
<p>As we entered the stunning music room, I was immediately struck by its elegance and relatively small size. In my mind, I had envisioned a large concert hall; instead, the space is intimate, ellipse-shaped and richly decorated.</p>
<p>Overshadowed by <a href="https://www.exploreclassicalmusic.com/vivaldi-and-the-ospedale-della-piet">the more prominent Ospedale della Pietà</a>, not much is known about the music-making that took place for centuries behind the walls of the Ospedaletto. But one of the greatest clues to its venerable history as a music school is literally on one of its walls. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552861/original/file-20231009-15-1jj80a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Colorful painting of women performing." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552861/original/file-20231009-15-1jj80a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552861/original/file-20231009-15-1jj80a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552861/original/file-20231009-15-1jj80a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552861/original/file-20231009-15-1jj80a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552861/original/file-20231009-15-1jj80a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552861/original/file-20231009-15-1jj80a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552861/original/file-20231009-15-1jj80a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jacopo Guarana’s fresco ‘Concert of the Putte’ (1776-77).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marica S.Tacconi</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A fresco on the far wall of the room, <a href="https://www.libreriauniversitaria.it/ospedaletto-sala-musica-favaro-tiziana/libro/9788885087071">painted in 1776-77 by Jacopo Guarana</a>, depicts a group of female musicians – likely portraits of some of the putte – at the feet of <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/apollo/">Apollo</a>, the Greek god of music. Some of them play string instruments; one, gazing toward the viewer, holds a page of sheet music.</p>
<p>Call it a professional quirk, but when I see a music score depicted in a painting, I have to get up close and try to read it. In this case, I was lucky: The music notation was quite legible, and the composer’s name was inscribed in the upper-right corner: “Sig. Anfossi.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A close-up of a painting of a sheet of music." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552862/original/file-20231009-29-54ha7a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552862/original/file-20231009-29-54ha7a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552862/original/file-20231009-29-54ha7a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552862/original/file-20231009-29-54ha7a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552862/original/file-20231009-29-54ha7a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552862/original/file-20231009-29-54ha7a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552862/original/file-20231009-29-54ha7a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The musical score depicted in Jacopo Guarana’s fresco.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marica S. Tacconi</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I took several photos of the fresco. I wanted to learn as much as I could about that piece of music painted on the wall.</p>
<p>The sound of Liesl’s singing snapped me out of my music detective mode. As I had hoped, her beautiful soprano voice filled the space with a tone so pure that it sounded almost ethereal. I turned around, but my friend was no longer in the room. Where was her singing coming from? </p>
<p>Liesl, it turns out, was perched in the singing gallery. With the permission of a clerk, she had climbed up to this partially hidden loft and was singing through a grille. It was here that the putte of the Ospedaletto performed in public concerts, their features partially obscured from the prying glances of the male listeners below.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552864/original/file-20231009-15-25i1yo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Silhouette of woman singing from behind a cage above a grand room." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552864/original/file-20231009-15-25i1yo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552864/original/file-20231009-15-25i1yo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552864/original/file-20231009-15-25i1yo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552864/original/file-20231009-15-25i1yo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552864/original/file-20231009-15-25i1yo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552864/original/file-20231009-15-25i1yo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552864/original/file-20231009-15-25i1yo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Liesl Odenweller sings from the gallery of the Ospedaletto’s music room.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marica S. Tacconi</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Women rally behind their beloved institution</h2>
<p>Armed with those clues on the wall, I continued my research in the days following the visit to the Ospedaletto. I learned that the music by “Signor Anfossi” shown in the fresco was drawn from the opera “Antigono,” composed by <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095412866">Pasquale Anfossi</a> (1727-97) on a libretto by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pietro-Metastasio">Pietro Metastasio</a>. The work premiered in Venice at the <a href="https://www.artnet.com/artists/francesco-guardi/the-interior-of-the-teatro-san-benedetto-venice-1UqjxTVRZT2LyYjJdQa0cg2">Teatro San Benedetto</a> in 1773.</p>
<p>The text of the solo song – known in opera <a href="https://www.operacolorado.org/blog/opera-explained-what-is-an-aria/">as an aria</a> – is legible in the excerpt on the wall. It reads, “Contro il destin che freme, combatteremo insieme” – “Against quivering destiny, we shall battle together.” </p>
<p>Like many works from the 17th and 18th centuries, the entire opera is lost. I was determined to find out, however, if that particular aria had survived. Sometimes, the “hit tunes” of an opera were copied or printed separately and performed as “arie staccate” – arias that were “detached” from the rest of the work. </p>
<p>Luck was on my side: To my delight, I found <a href="https://www.internetculturale.it/jmms/iccuviewer/iccu.jsp?id=oai%3Awww.internetculturale.sbn.it%2FTeca%3A20%3ANT0000%3AFR0084-01A07_04d&mode=all&teca=MagTeca+-+ICCU">a copy of the aria in a library in Montecassino</a>, a small town southeast of Rome. Why was that particular excerpt chosen to be displayed so prominently on the wall? </p>
<p>Like other institutions in Venice, the Ospedaletto faced financial hardship in the 1770s. Evidence suggests that <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Nel_regno_dei_poveri/ojgtAQAAIAAJ?hl=en">the putte of the Ospedaletto were likely involved in raising the funds</a> for the decoration of the music room. The new hall enabled them to give performances for special guests and benefactors, which brought in substantial donations. Together with Pasquale Anfossi, who was their music teacher from 1773 to 1777, they rallied behind their beloved institution, saving it – at least temporarily – from financial destitution. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557295/original/file-20231102-29-c3sj0z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two girls, one holding music, the other depicted in a side profile, and a man holding sheets of music gazing down at them from behind." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557295/original/file-20231102-29-c3sj0z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557295/original/file-20231102-29-c3sj0z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557295/original/file-20231102-29-c3sj0z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557295/original/file-20231102-29-c3sj0z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557295/original/file-20231102-29-c3sj0z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557295/original/file-20231102-29-c3sj0z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557295/original/file-20231102-29-c3sj0z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Italian composer Pasquale Anfossi, holding rolled up sheets of music, makes an appearance in the fresco.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marica S. Tacconi</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Against quivering destiny, we shall battle together” may well have served as a rallying cry for the putte of the Ospedaletto, who literally “battled together” to preserve their splendid music conservatory.</p>
<p>Incidentally, the putte may also have wanted to honor their teacher, as Pasquale Anfossi, too, is portrayed in Guarana’s fresco, directly behind the young woman holding up his music. </p>
<h2>From wall to concert hall</h2>
<p>One of the aspects I find most rewarding about the study of older music is the process of discovering a work that has been neglected and unheard for hundreds of years and bringing it back to modern audiences.</p>
<p>Inspired by the Ospedaletto’s music room, Liesl Odenweller and I have embarked on a collaborative project that brings back not only the aria on the wall but also other music from the institution that has gone unheard for centuries. Thanks to a generous grant from the <a href="https://www.delmas.org/grantees-venetian-program">Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation</a>, the <a href="https://venicemusicproject.it/en/">Venice Music Project</a> – the ensemble Liesl co-founded in 2013 – will perform this music in a <a href="https://venicemusicproject.it/en/concert/hidden-treasures-of-the-ospedaletto/">concert in Venice on Dec. 2, 2023</a>.</p>
<p>Our program will include “Contro il destin” as well as other excerpts from “Antigono” – essentially, all that survives from that opera. In addition, we will include works by Tommaso Traetta (1727-79) and Antonio Sacchini (1730-86) who, like Anfossi, taught the young women, in some cases launching their international music careers.</p>
<p>Because the music of the past was <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/musical-notation/Evolution-of-Western-staff-notation">written in a notation</a> that’s different from that used today, it’s necessary to translate and input every mark of the original score – notes, dynamics and other expressive marks – into a music notation software to produce a modern score that can be easily read by today’s musicians.</p>
<p>By performing on period instruments and using a historically informed approach, the musicians of the Venice Music Project and I are excited to revive this remarkably beautiful and meaningful music. Its neglect is certainly not a reflection of its artistic quality but rather likely the result of other composers, such as Vivaldi and Mozart, taking over the spotlight and overshadowing the works of other masters. </p>
<p>This music deserves to be heard – as does the story of the young women of the Ospedaletto.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211995/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This project received funding from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.</span></em></p>On the wall of an orphanage in Venice, a musicologist encountered a fresco featuring an aria written for an opera. She’s since embarked on a project to bring this forgotten music back.Marica S. Tacconi, Distinguished Professor of Musicology and Art History, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2133102023-10-24T13:12:46Z2023-10-24T13:12:46ZHIV-positive parents in Zimbabwe struggle to manage their children’s education – study shows how<p>Over the past three decades researchers have explored various aspects of the impact of the HIV pandemic. One focus area has been children who have lost their parents to AIDS. Less attention has been given to children who are raised by parents living with HIV. This group has become much bigger as more people have <a href="https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/featurestories/2021/september/20210906_global-roll-out-hiv-treatment">access to antiretroviral therapy</a> and are therefore expected to raise their children. </p>
<p>Our research in Zimbabwe looked at the effects the HIV status of parents had on their children’s education. </p>
<p>In Zimbabwe, the current HIV prevalence rate among adults is about <a href="https://www.unicef.org/zimbabwe/hivaids">13%</a>. In 1997 it was at its peak at <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20406793/">29.3%</a>. Nevertheless, Zimbabwe still has the <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/270209/countries-with-the-highest-global-hiv-prevalence/#:%7E:text=Among%20all%20countries%20worldwide%20those,rate%20of%20almost%2026%20percent.%20**link%20is%20behind%20a%20paywall**">sixth highest HIV rate</a> in the world. Eswatini has the highest rate (19.58%) and South Africa ranks fourth (14.75%).</p>
<p>Our research focused on mothers in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital city, who had access to treatment. We were interested in the impact of HIV on their investment in their children’s education. We conducted <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00346764.2023.2214126">interviews</a> at <a href="http://mashambanzou.co.zw/">Mashambanzou Care Trust</a>, a local non-profit organisation that provides care to about 5,000 HIV-positive low-income individuals in Harare. Thirteen HIV-positive mothers were interviewed to discuss the key reasons behind the disruption of their children’s schooling .</p>
<p>We found that the HIV status of low-income parents in Zimbabwe severely affected their children’s education, in four ways.</p>
<p>Firstly, HIV worsened the financial barriers parents faced when trying to get their children educated. Secondly, children missed school because they needed to take care of sick parents or siblings. Thirdly, sick parents were not involved with their children’s <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00346764.2023.2214126">academic achievement</a> because they were physically, mentally and emotionally incapable of helping. Lastly, children of HIV-positive mothers did not always have birth certificates, a major barrier to school and exam registration in Zimbabwe.</p>
<h2>Financial barriers</h2>
<p>The research showed that HIV in Zimbabwe is not only a health issue but also a socioeconomic problem that can force people into <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00346764.2023.2214126">poverty traps</a>. </p>
<p>HIV-positive women expressed the view that the Zimbabwean economy, their partner’s health and their own health affected how they supported their children’s educational needs. </p>
<p>We found children with parents who could not afford to pay school fees or buy school uniforms could be sent home until the payments were made. Other low income families experienced this too but parents with HIV could not work and so had more difficulty paying school fees.</p>
<p>HIV-affected families could also face the burden of raising other children from deceased or ill family members. Some of the mothers had siblings and close family members who had died of AIDS. In one case, a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00346764.2023.2214126">single HIV-positive mother </a> had three biological children and three orphans from relatives.</p>
<h1>Missing school</h1>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00346764.2023.2214126">Girls</a> were particularly affected because they were expected to care for siblings, help sick parents with daily activities such as eating and toileting, and make sure they had a place to live and food to eat. </p>
<p>Mothers spoke about the heavy burden their daughters had to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00346764.2023.2214126">carry</a>. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>My eldest child was the one who took care of me and cooked for me. When I got sick, my daughter stopped going to school. She is the one who took the responsibility of taking care of me. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Some children were forced to drop out of school to earn an income. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>He dropped out of school after finishing his Form 3. He is currently selling bananas at Mbare and the money he is getting is not enough. Most of the time he brings home some food after selling bananas. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>No time to help</h2>
<p>Most HIV-positive mothers told us that they did not <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00346764.2023.2214126">spend time</a> with their children because they spent a lot of time on income-generating activities, attending to their own health, or their husband’s health. These tough conditions led to even more illness and stress.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>All my seven children stay at home as none of them is in school right now. Each day of their lives is difficult as in some cases we fail to get some food to eat. After having failed to get food for the family, it then stresses me more as the mother. Given my condition that I am HIV-positive I end up getting continuous headaches and sometimes I get sick as a result of the stress. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Birth certificates</h2>
<p>Some HIV-positive parents were too sick to obtain birth certificates for their <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00346764.2023.2214126">children</a>. Without birth certificates, children risk being sent home and cannot benefit from programmes that target poor children. One mother told of trying to get birth certificates for her children in Mutare, almost 300 kilometres away from Harare.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I once went to Mutare to secure birth certificates for my children. I was told to bring my national identification card which was in Harare during that time. I am yet to go back to Mutare and collect birth certificates for my children. I am only being stopped from travelling because I am currently sick and receiving treatment. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Looking to the future</h2>
<p>Our research highlights a vulnerable group of children who should also benefit from social assistance programmes that target HIV-affected orphans, given that their parents are too sick to care for them. </p>
<p>They should be included in the <a href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/ajsw/article/view/194113#:%7E:text=Zimbabwe%20adopted%20the%20National%20Orphan,social%20safety%20nets%20for%20OVC.">National Orphan Care Policy</a>, which seeks to provide basic care and protection to orphans and vulnerable children, and the <a href="https://www.unicef.org/esa/media/11846/file/Unicef_Zimbabwe_Education_Budget_Brief_2022.pdf">Basic Education Assistance Module</a>, which pays school fees for this group of children.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213310/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tatenda Zinyemba does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some children of HIV-positive parents drop out of school to look after their mothers and fathers. Others skip class to earn cash for the family by selling goods.Tatenda Zinyemba, Researcher in Economics, Health and Governance, Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology, United Nations UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2055422023-06-05T10:31:53Z2023-06-05T10:31:53ZUganda’s Ghetto Kids make Britain’s Got Talent history – here’s the reality of ‘orphanages’ around the world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529544/original/file-20230601-29-s4iyf1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=52%2C14%2C1196%2C599&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KreP6Xwan7E">Screen grab/Britain's Got Talent on YouTube</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A group of talented young dancers from Uganda warmed hearts around the world after earning the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRAyQ77jVBg">coveted “golden buzzer”</a> on Britain’s Got Talent. The Ghetto Kids are a dance troupe of children between the ages of five and 13 growing up in a child care institution in Uganda. Putting on electrifying performances that showed off their personalities and impressive choreography, the children made it to the final. </p>
<p>The attention on Ghetto Kids presents a chance to acknowledge the lived realities of approximately <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/commissions/deinstitutionalisation">5.4 million children worldwide</a> growing up in institutional care. For many of these children, there are deeply troubling reasons for their entry into care, and many have challenging childhoods away from their families.</p>
<p>The Ugandan Care Leavers Association has released a <a href="https://www.uganda-care-leavers.org/blog/2023/4/24/uganda-care-leavers-statement-regarding-the-bgt-last-weekend">balanced yet strong critique</a> of the promotion of Ghetto Kids on Britain’s Got Talent. The campaigners recognise that the public support of Ghetto Kids is well intentioned. But they highlight, through sharing their own experiences, how detrimental the lifelong impact of institutional care can be. </p>
<p><a href="https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/pdf/1398.pdf/">Institutional care</a> refers to large numbers of children accommodated in one home and cared for by a relatively small number of staff. They differ from smaller scale residential children’s homes that often care for around five to ten children, offer more family-like care and are embedded in the community. The Ghetto Kids home looks after over 30 children, and the founder, Daouda Kavuma, has stated on the show that he has ambitions to grow this number. </p>
<p>Globally, it is estimated that <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/ghana/least-four-out-five-children-orphanages-still-have-parents-save-children-reveals">four out of five children</a> living in institutional settings actually have family. <a href="https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/pdf/1398.pdf/">Save the Children’s research</a> found that 98% of children in institutional care in central and eastern Europe, 94% in Indonesia, and 90% in Ghana have at least one living parent. </p>
<p>Despite this, many organisations that care for these children still refer to themselves as orphanages. The word evokes stories of caring for a relinquished child. This is a powerful narrative for organisations in low income countries to increase charitable donations. </p>
<p>Studies have revealed that numerous children are victims of exploitation and trafficking into institutions. In some cases, orphanage owners recruit or traffic children to establish <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2349301120140206?casa_token=9_3cbX5FM6kAAAAA:1TyvwZ5x4i4cM83HF3wD8sSStfv6LEzuVScxU7pyPJB1tC4ftrkfeqrd3k7piurEcHGh7QpzODs">“voluntourism”</a> programs. They can profit from overseas volunteers who pay to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/orphanage-trafficking-in-international-law/2D46FD3F9EC343C970306A73EEB66967">spend time with “orphans”</a>.</p>
<h2>The orphan myth</h2>
<p>In my <a href="http://www.sharingtheirnarratives.com">research in Thailand</a> parents told my colleagues and I that they were dissuaded from visiting their children in the homes. This was to avoid the parents encountering donors who believed the children were orphans. Researchers describe this false narrative as the <a href="https://alternativecarethailand.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Exploring-the-Orphan-Myth-in-Thailand_100919_lowres.pdf">“orphan myth”</a>. </p>
<p>There is no evidence that the Ghetto Kids home engages in these exploitative practices, but Britain’s Got Talent risks perpetuating this myth in how it frames their story. <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/i-rescued-ghetto-kids-slums-30115131">Press coverage</a>, and the children themselves, refer to the home as an orphanage. However, Kavuma Dauda, the founder of the troupe, has only said that “some” of the children are orphans. (Britain’s Got Talent did not respond to The Conversation’s request for comment.)</p>
<p>In many countries, children are rarely placed into care due to orphanhood or concerns about abuse. More often, <a href="https://bettercarenetwork.org/bcn-in-action/key-initiatives/rethink-orphanages/resources/people-money-and-resources-the-drivers-of-institutionalization">the driver is poverty and resources</a>. In Thailand <a href="http://www.sharingtheirnarratives.com">we found</a> that parents often placed their children in care to ensure access to basic needs, food, healthcare and education. </p>
<p>For a family living in poverty, the experiences of children from organisations like Ghetto Kids – attending university, finding career success or international dance fame – might present an opportunity to give their children a better life. However, these opportunities can come at a significant cost: a childhood apart from their families.</p>
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<h2>The harms of institutional care</h2>
<p>Decades of research has highlighted the negative outcomes for children in institutional forms of care around the world. The staff-to-child ratio in institutions often affects the staff’s ability to nurture the children. This is often compounded by the staff members being on shift patterns that result in inconsistent care. Children in some settings can experience an estimated <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4130248/">50 to 100 different caregivers</a> in the space of a year.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27429536/">systematic review</a> of the literature concluded that institutional care has a negative impact on children’s attachment. Other studies have reported lower IQ scores and impaired physical growth in institutionalised children compared to those in family based care. This has led <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25125707/">researchers</a> to argue that institutional care can be considered a form of child maltreatment, and described this as a form of structural neglect. </p>
<p>These findings were reinforced in a systematic literature review by the Lancet Commission in 2020, which <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/commissions/deinstitutionalisation">unequivocally concluded</a> that institutionalised children in alternative care experience impairment in their physical, social, cognitive and emotional development.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ghetto-kids-whats-behind-the-moves-of-the-ugandan-dance-troupe-that-stormed-the-world-204130">Ghetto Kids: what's behind the moves of the Ugandan dance troupe that stormed the world</a>
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<h2>Care reform</h2>
<p>In their statement on Ghetto Kids, the <a href="https://www.uganda-care-leavers.org/blog/2023/4/24/uganda-care-leavers-statement-regarding-the-bgt-last-weekend">Ugandan Care Leavers association</a> called for an end to the promotion of institutional care without considering alternatives that enable children to stay connected to their families and communities. </p>
<p>This alternative lies in governments developing child welfare policies and practices informed by the <a href="https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/673583?ln=en">UN guidelines on alternative care</a>. These state children should only be placed away from their families when necessary and that alternatives to institutions with large numbers of children should be developed.</p>
<p>As a result, countries including <a href="https://www.socialprotection.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/The-National-Care-Reform-Strategy-for-Children-in-Kenya-2022-2032.pdf">Kenya</a> and <a href="https://www.unicef.org/rwanda/reports/child-care-reform-programme-rwanda">Rwanda</a> have started to reform national care to support children to remain in their families, or be placed into small scale children’s homes or foster care placements if that’s not possible.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/kenya-takes-next-steps-to-replace-childrens-homes-with-family-care-123876">Kenya takes next steps to replace children's homes with family care</a>
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<p>This reform is also happening in <a href="https://www.opml.co.uk/projects/child-care-reform-uganda">Uganda</a>, where activists from the <a href="https://www.uganda-care-leavers.org/">care leavers association</a> and other <a href="https://childsifoundation.org/">nongovernmental</a> <a href="https://www.hopeandhomes.org/every-child-deserves-a-home-advantage/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIj8K71ujb_gIVp-_tCh3AbwT0EAAYASAAEgI5vfD_BwE">organisations</a> are working with the government to ensure that children’s rights to family life, enshrined in the <a href="https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/what-we-do/childrens-rights/united-nations-convention-of-the-rights-of-the-child?ppc=true&matchtype=&s_keyword=&adposition=&s_kwcid=AL!9048!3!537197821322!!!g!!&gad=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI57u4m_Db_gIVkdLtCh3yvw3gEAAYAyAAEgKM0vD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds">UN convention on the rights of the child</a> and the <a href="https://au.int/en/treaties/african-charter-rights-and-welfare-child">African charter on the rights and welfare of the child</a>, are met.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205542/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin Rogers has previously received research funding from The British Council and The Martin James Foundation. He is also a part of the Open University's Centre for the Study of Global Development.</span></em></p>The success of the Ugandan dance troupe offers a chance to discuss the harms of institutional care.Justin Rogers, Lecturer in Social Work, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1994142023-05-01T03:30:49Z2023-05-01T03:30:49ZAbusive orphanages and forced adoption: delving into past child welfare practices that haunt the present<p>Recent <a href="https://nit.com.au/05-04-2023/5500/childrens-commission-urges-action-as-new-data-shows-exploitation-of-children-in-care">publicity</a> about the continuing abuse of children in out-of-home care may be a source of shame for Australians, but it does not come as a surprise. </p>
<p>A series of inquiries at both state and Commonwealth level over the last quarter century exposed such “care” as inherently abusive. The <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/parliamentary_business/committees/senate/community_affairs/completed_inquiries/2004-07/inst_care/report/index">inquiries</a> also <a href="https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/">detailed</a> the lengths to which the governing institutions were prepared to go to deny this reality.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Ghosts of the Orphanage – Christine Kenneally (Hachette); Crazy Bastard – Abraham Maddison (Wakefield Press)</em></p>
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<p>The United States has resisted the “age of inquiry” that has swept across much of the western world, leaving former orphanage residents to pursue their cases through the courts as individuals. </p>
<p>It is this struggle that forms the core of journalist Christine Kenneally’s latest book, <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/christine-kenneally/ghosts-of-the-orphanage">Ghosts of the Orphanage</a>. Her focus is on St Joseph’s Orphanage in Burlington, Vermont, where generations of children were under the control of untrained and often cruel nuns, and a series of paedophilic priests. </p>
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<p>A reunion in 1994 provided the opportunity for former residents to share their memories of cruel and sometimes bizarre punishments. They engaged a lawyer and were able to show commonalities across these memories. But they were forced to pursue redress as individuals at a time when the community was disinclined to believe that the church would lie. Most settled out of court. </p>
<p>The reputation of the Catholic Church has since been damaged by clerical sexual abuse scandals across the world, which have raised awareness of the lengths to which the Church has been prepared to go to keep its secrets. </p>
<p>Kenneally’s book thus addresses a more sympathetic audience than survivors faced in the past. She has also uncovered material that was not available at the time of the original cases. This new evidence has allowed her to validate the survivors’ memories and document systematic failures, not only within St Joseph’s Orphanage, but in similar institutions within and beyond the United States. </p>
<p>The most concerning of the scandals Kenneally has uncovered involves the persistent rumours that some institutionalised children died as a result of their abuse and that their deaths were covered up: these children are the “ghosts of the orphanage”. </p>
<p>Similar rumours have circulated wherever children have been kept in closed institutions beyond the public gaze. And children did often disappear from such institutions. They were returned to their families or taken to hospitals or assigned alternative placements, without any explanation being offered to their fellow residents. </p>
<p>Children also died in care from illness, accident or neglect, and were buried without ceremony in the unmarked plots which, until recently, institutions maintained at local cemeteries. </p>
<p>Such deaths were rarely investigated. In the few cases where an allegation that the death was a result of abuse proceeded to trial, <a href="https://safeguardingchildren.acu.edu.au/research-and-resources/history-of-australian-inquiries-reviewing-institutions-providing-care-for-children">the sympathy of the courts</a> tended to lie with the orphanage authorities, rather than with the children.</p>
<p>In Australia, there are some notable historical examples of abuses that became public. In 1896, the Brisbane Courier reported that an Aboriginal child named Casey was beaten to death at Queensland’s Myora Mission by the matron, who was charged with manslaughter. In 1911, George Jones <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/26341629">died from neglect</a> at Western Australia’s Swan Orphanage. In 1933, the Age reported that Rex Simpson <a href="http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article203353990">died from unrecognised tetanus</a> at Victoria’s Seaside Garden Home for Boys. </p>
<p>Yet these publicised cases are rare exceptions in a environment in which institutional deaths were widely ignored. Surrounded by such silences, it is not surprising that rumours of unmarked graves abound among survivor communities, including in Australia. </p>
<p>Investigations around institutions such as <a href="http://www.brokenrites.org.au/drupal/node/291">Bindoon</a> in Western Australia and <a href="https://www.ballaratorphanagechildrenshome.com/investigation-into-site.html">Ballarat Orphanage</a> have so far failed to validate such stories. But the shocking disclosures from Ireland’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/03/mass-grave-of-babies-and-children-found-at-tuam-orphanage-in-ireland">Tuam Mother and Babies Home</a>, and the <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/crown-indigenous-relations-northern-affairs/news/2022/05/statement-on-the-anniversary-of-locating-unmarked-graves-at-kamloops-residential-school.html">Canadian Residential Schools</a> have added credibility to the unofficial accounts. </p>
<p>Kenneally’s investigation of similar allegations from St Joseph’s adds fuel to the fire. Her account goes beyond accepted stories of abuse to examine deaths in <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60464447">Tuam</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/aug/23/nuns-charged-in-investigation-into-child-abuse-at-smyllum-park">Smyllum Park</a>, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/28/world/children-remains-discovered-canada-kamloops-school/index.html">Kamloops</a>, and other institutions in Canada and the United States. She contrasts survivors’ memories with public accounts of orphanage operations, while acknowledging the distorting influence of trauma on memory and the perils of cross examination.</p>
<p>Her book exposes orphanages as hidden places which keep their secrets. Their residents effectively became citizens of a separate realm, irrespective of where the orphanage was located, part of an abusive system Kenneally describes as “an invisible archipelago”. </p>
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<h2>The promotion of adoption</h2>
<p>The promotion of adoption, particularly in the postwar era, would suggest that the negative aspects of orphanages were not unknown. Authorities assumed that single mothers would not be able to provide for their children, so they advanced a clean break theory. Adoption at birth, it was argued, would prevent children from “languishing” in orphanages when their mothers were forced to surrender them later in life. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.wakefieldpress.com.au/product.php?productid=1853">Crazy Bastard</a>, journalist and adoptee Derek Pedley, writing under his birth name Abraham Maddison, sets out to show that this assumption was fraught. He sees his life as broken by his forced adoption.</p>
<p>Following the <a href="https://adopteerightsaustralia.org.au/product/the-primal-wound-understanding-the-adopted-child/">primal wound theory</a> expounded by Nancy Verrier, Maddison views his adoption as the major explanation for the dysfunction that followed his discovery of his adopted status at 15. When a reunion with his mother – Joye Maddison – and her wider family failed due to his disruptive behaviour, exacerbated by his alcohol abuse and mental health issues, he interpreted this as a second abandonment. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523121/original/file-20230427-18-yjanau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523121/original/file-20230427-18-yjanau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523121/original/file-20230427-18-yjanau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=871&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523121/original/file-20230427-18-yjanau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=871&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523121/original/file-20230427-18-yjanau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=871&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523121/original/file-20230427-18-yjanau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1094&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523121/original/file-20230427-18-yjanau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1094&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523121/original/file-20230427-18-yjanau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1094&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Joye Maddison in the early 1970s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wakefield Press</span></span>
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<p>But a letter written by his mother at the time of his birth, but not given to Maddison until after her death, overturns this narrative of multiple abandonment. He also gains access to his mother’s diaries, which document her struggles over relinquishing her child and her continuing concern for his fate throughout the years when access to him was denied. </p>
<p>These documents lead Maddison to reevaluate their relationship. In Crazy Bastard, he reviews his life, interweaving his personal story with psychological insights, his recollections augmented by this mother’s writings and discussion with friends. He concludes that he and his mother were both victims. </p>
<p>Another crucial element in Maddison’s reevaluation is the evidence that emerged from the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/parliamentary_business/committees/senate/community_affairs/completed_inquiries/2010-13/commcontribformerforcedadoption/report/index">Senate Inquiry into Former Forced Adoptions</a>. Here Maddison was able to hear the voices of many women whose lives were also shaped, and harmed, by the practice of forced adoption. His own experiences were validated.</p>
<p>Crazy Bastard is the story of Maddison rebuilding his life. It is a valuable addition to the growing list of adoption memoirs that disrupt the happy-ever-after narrative on which the practice was based.</p>
<p>By locating his experiences within this wider narrative, Maddison has been able to move beyond the dysfunction that marred his past. Part of his rebuilding process has also involved a reunion with his father’s family – a reunion far less troubled than his original contact with his mother. </p>
<h2>Voices of survivors</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523122/original/file-20230427-18-e42c9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523122/original/file-20230427-18-e42c9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523122/original/file-20230427-18-e42c9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523122/original/file-20230427-18-e42c9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523122/original/file-20230427-18-e42c9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523122/original/file-20230427-18-e42c9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523122/original/file-20230427-18-e42c9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523122/original/file-20230427-18-e42c9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Abraham Maddison, August 1974.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wakefield Press</span></span>
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<p>Ghosts of the Orphanage and Crazy Bastard address child welfare practices of the past, but they have continuing relevance for the present. As the recently opened <a href="https://aomuseum.com.au/">Australian Orphanage Museum</a> shows us, the legacy of such practices lives on for the survivors, whose adult experiences have been shaped by the disruptions of their childhood. </p>
<p>We need to continue to listen to the voices of these survivors. Their voices provide a valuable counterbalance to politicians and experts who seek to impose simplistic solutions to the complex problems in child protection that continue to face society today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199414/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shurlee Swain receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Department of Social Services. </span></em></p>The voices of survivors are a valuable counterbalance to those who seek simplistic solutions to complex problems in child protection.Shurlee Swain, Professor of Humanities, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1653532021-09-23T14:08:37Z2021-09-23T14:08:37ZChildren are losing caregivers to COVID-19: they need support<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419974/original/file-20210908-15-ktc1cp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">As the pandemic progresses, many more children will experience devastating losses.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> SDI Productions/GettyImages</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Children have a very <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01897-w">low risk of death or severe disease</a> from COVID-19. As a result, they have not been a core focus in the pandemic response priorities of prevention, detection, and response. But this approach doesn’t take into account the secondary impacts of the pandemic. These include children being orphaned or bereft of their caregivers.</p>
<p>Children are among the most vulnerable members of any society and are thus disproportionately affected by the devastation of this pandemic. If every adult death represents a child who has lost a member of their care network, we are on the cusp of a crisis of care for those children left behind. Without support, these children are set to face adverse consequences, including poverty, abuse, and institutionalisation.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/covid-19-in-children-the-south-african-experience-and-way-forward-164586">COVID-19 in children: the South African experience and way forward</a>
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<p>A first step in supporting these children is to figure out how many have lost guardians to COVID-19. We <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01253-8/fulltext">worked with experts</a> at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organisation, the World Bank, and the United States Agency for International Development to estimate this number. </p>
<p>We used mathematical modelling and mortality and fertility data from 21 countries that account for 76% of the reported global deaths from COVID-19. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/downloads/community/orphanhood-report.pdf">findings</a> uncovered a hidden, secondary pandemic. Over the first 14 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, 1.5 million children around the globe lost primary caregivers, including at least one parent or grandparent, to the virus. We also created an <a href="https://imperialcollegelondon.github.io/orphanhood_calculator/#/country/Brazil">online calculator</a> that shows minimum estimates for every country in the world.</p>
<p>As the pandemic progresses, many more children will experience such devastating losses. By September 2021 the number had already risen to 2.3 million. Evidence-based responses to this caregiver loss are urgently needed within global and national responses to COVID-19.</p>
<h2>Crisis of care</h2>
<p>More than 1.1 million children around the world experienced the death of <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01253-8/fulltext">a primary caregiver</a>, such as a parent or custodial grandparent, between March 2020 and April 2021. More than <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01253-8/fulltext">1.5 million</a> children experienced the death of primary caregivers as well as co-residing grandparents (or kin).</p>
<p>Considering custodial grandparents as caregivers in our research is particularly important for an African context. Grandparents <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/data/living-arrangements-older-persons">often</a> serve as guardians, caring for children whose parents migrated for work, have died, or are separated by conflict or war. </p>
<p>Countries with the highest numbers of children losing primary caregivers were South Africa, Peru, the USA, India, Brazil, and Mexico. The number of children orphaned in these countries ranges from 94 ,625 to 1, 562, 000. On the African continent, South Africa has experienced the greatest loss of primary caregivers. Although it is likely that other countries may be under-reporting COVID-19-associated deaths and may have many more orphaned children than we were able to measure. But we know that one in every 200 children in the country lost their primary caregiver. In sum, estimates suggest that every 12 seconds, a child around the world loses a caregiver to the coronavirus pandemic.</p>
<p>As long as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, this devastating toll of caregiver loss will increase daily. For those of us working in child protection, these figures representing the scale of COVID-19-associated orphanhood are deeply concerning. They present serious long-term challenges to the well-being of children.</p>
<p>Children experiencing COVID-19-associated deaths of parents or caregivers are at greater risk of family separation and institutionalisation. Institutionalisation <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanchi/PIIS2352-4642(20)30060-2.pdf">should be avoided</a> because of its clear damage to psychosocial, physical and neural development.</p>
<p>Accelerating equitable vaccine delivery is key to developing a response to this crisis. Over half a billion COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered worldwide. But <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/31/world/global-vaccine-supply-inequity.html">more than 75%</a> have been used by the world’s richest countries. To this day, less than <a href="https://www.afro.who.int/news/eight-10-african-countries-miss-crucial-covid-19-vaccination-goal">3%</a> of Africa’s population has been fully vaccinated. This moment is all too reminiscent of when AIDS first rampaged through sub-Saharan Africa. It was a time when lifesaving medicines were available in the United States and Europe, but still years away for other countries.</p>
<h2>Lessons from HIV</h2>
<p>Lessons from mass-fatality outbreaks such as HIV might pave a way forward. </p>
<p>In 2003, the United States’ President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) programme made <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10797">a ground-breaking commitment</a> to children worldwide affected by the AIDS epidemic. It mandated that 10% of the programme’s funds would support children whose primary caregivers had died of AIDS or had acquired HIV. This programme, through evidence-based interventions and clinical services, continues to support families caring for children who lost caregivers to AIDS. This helps prevent children being placed in institutions.</p>
<p>Such evidence-based responses should inspire the thinking around how best to care for bereaved children. It is essential to help families caring for these children. Psychosocial support groups should be established. Surviving caregivers must be empowered to facilitate grieving and open communication with children about the trauma of losing loved ones. We must advocate for resources to be allocated to this.</p>
<p>Investments are also urgently needed for accelerator programmes adapted to COVID-19, which combine economic interventions, positive parenting, and education support. Our earlier <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4642(19)30033-1/fulltext">research</a> shows that low-cost approaches focused on family strengthening can improve multiple outcomes for children with deceased caregivers.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4642(19)30033-1/fulltext">research</a> on development accelerators on the African continent has also shown that programmes like these are feasible and can be affordable. For example, cellphone-based parenting support programmes that help caregivers to manage stress, give them strategies for nonviolent discipline and teach ways to keep children safe from sexual violence can cost as little as about $8 a child.</p>
<p>The grief of these children and their future are the global community’s responsibility. An all-encompassing response to these losses is urgent.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165353/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lorraine Sherr has received various research grants over the course of my academic career.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lucie Cluver receives research grants to the University of Oxford and the University of Cape Town from the Oak Foundation and Global Challenges Research Fund (UK) for this work. </span></em></p>Estimates suggest that every 12 seconds, a child somewhere in the world loses a caregiver to the coronavirus pandemic.Lorraine Sherr, Professor of Clinical and Health Psychology, UCLLucie Cluver, Honorary Professor in Psychiatry and Mental Health, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1166072019-05-09T14:29:01Z2019-05-09T14:29:01ZThe story of Oromo slaves bound for Arabia who were brought to South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273600/original/file-20190509-183096-1brlr85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=117%2C263%2C2578%2C1327&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Oromo children saved from slavery. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied by author</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In September 1888, the HMS Osprey serving in the Royal Navy’s anti-slave trade mission in the Red Sea, based in Aden, intercepted three dhows embarked from Rahayta and Tadjoura on the Ethiopia coast. </p>
<p>Aboard were 204 boys and girls bound for resale in Arabian markets. Other dhows with young human cargo were also apprehended. The children came from the highland area of Oromia Region of Ethiopia, and spoke the Oromo language.</p>
<p>They had been trekked as many as several hundred kilometres to the coast. The children were taken to Aden and, for a time, were housed and cared for at the Free Church of Scotland mission at Sheikh Othman. </p>
<p>The arrivals, however, were often too debilitated to withstand the harsh climate and prevalent malaria. In 1890, 64 of the survivors were transferred to the Free Church of Scotland’s Lovedale Institution, in Alice, a town in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. </p>
<p>The story is captured in a new book laden with graphs, maps, charts and statistics. But if you like your history as narrative, you’ll have the job of piecing together this extraordinary <a href="https://www.loot.co.za/product/sandra-rowoldt-shell-children-of-hope/fyyp-5169-g0a0">story</a> written by Sandra Rowoldt Shell in <em>Children of Hope: The Odyssey of the Oromo Slaves from Ethiopia to South Africa</em>. </p>
<h2>Fate of Oromo kids</h2>
<p>During the 10 years the children spent at Lovedale they proved to be good students and on good terms with their Xhosa-speaking and English school mates. Four in five survived and left the school as young adults in search of opportunities. They became teachers, shop assistants, carpenters, painters, cooks, clerks.</p>
<p>Most remained in South Africa, but 17 earned fares to Ethiopia. A few married and started families. One whose story is traced in the book is Bisho Jarsa who married former Lovedale student Reverend Frederick Scheepers. Their daughter Dimbiti married carpenter James Edward Alexander, and were the parents of South African liberation struggle veteran and academic <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dr-neville-edward-alexander">Neville Alexander</a>. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273021/original/file-20190507-103045-1646uii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273021/original/file-20190507-103045-1646uii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273021/original/file-20190507-103045-1646uii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273021/original/file-20190507-103045-1646uii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273021/original/file-20190507-103045-1646uii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273021/original/file-20190507-103045-1646uii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273021/original/file-20190507-103045-1646uii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>But most of the Oromo orphans’ lives ended in obscurity or tragedy. Mortality among the returnees was particularly high (33%). </p>
<p>However, the orphans’ stories are not completely lost. Many left behind their autobiographies at Lovedale. They related, in their own voices, their individual ordeals from the time they were captured, sold or pawned, including the tortuously long journeys between their Oromo homeland to the coast. All are rendered in full in the books’ appendices.</p>
<p>Much of Shell’s account delivers the quantitative side of the Oromo story. She followed an assiduous research path to retrieve all possible data related to the orphans, their place of origin, the details of their enslavement and transfer, place by place to various entrepots, the traders and merchants involved, until over a 100 pages later, the Royal Navy’s Osprey appears.</p>
<h2>Rich detail</h2>
<p>Once in Aden, lengthy asides document the Sheikh Othman mission and its Keith-Falconer school (illustrated by photographs), personal details about the missionaries involved, orphan mortality, age and gender data. </p>
<p>After the orphans reach East London, in the Eastern Cape, we learn a lot about the Lovedale curriculum, comparative performance of Oromo and non-Oromo students (the Oromo did better on average), supplemented with graphs on class marks and percentages, including distributions, gendered results, class positions, and mortality rates, among others (the reproductive quality of the graphs is not very good).</p>
<p>A teacher scandal gets its own sleuthing through the display of doctored photographs eliding the suggestive hands of an Oromo boy on the alleged culprit’s shoulders prior to his dismissal. </p>
<p>Once leaving Lovedale, individuals are traced (thanks to a 1903 questionnaire results unearthed by Shell) that reflect the mixed fortunes of the Lovedale graduates. Though she displays many Oromo group photographs, Shell has uncovered only one individual photograph (the arresting Berille Boko). </p>
<p>A full one-third of the volume is made up of appendices on data variables, the Oromo autobiographies with a place-name gazetteer, an essay by Gutama Jarafo, detailed endnotes, bibliography and an extensive index.</p>
<p>Shell has added a great deal to our understanding of how children were ensnared into the Indian Ocean slave trade, which connected much of the Eastern African interior to Arabia, the Persian Gulf and India. Long after the Atlantic slave trade was snuffed out, the Indian Ocean trade continued almost to the beginning of the 20th century. The Osprey’s intervention and the survival of but a mere quarter of those it rescued suggests that thousands of children’s lives remained enslaved and in misery.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116607/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fred Morton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Book adds a great deal to our understanding of how children were ensnared into the Indian Ocean slave trade.Fred Morton, Professor of History, University of BotswanaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/719492017-02-01T12:54:02Z2017-02-01T12:54:02ZCeaușescu’s orphans: what a regressive abortion law does to a country<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155208/original/image-20170201-29896-1tzbcq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Penny Kibble / Flickr</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Donald Trump’s announcement of the reinstatement and reinforcement of the “<a href="https://www.engenderhealth.org/media/info/definition-global-gag-rule.php">global gag</a>” – which means the US will no longer fund any non-governmental health organisations working outside the US that give information about abortion – will have a devastating impact in some countries. I know because I have witnessed it happen before. </p>
<p>In 1990, as a young reporter specialising in women’s issues, I travelled to Romania a few weeks after the revolution that deposed the dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu. While I was there, I spent time with Francu – a mother of two. In my mind’s eye, we are in a bare Bucharest hospital corridor which doubles up as recovery room. Francu is relaxed and smiling although she’s about to have an abortion. But that’s because this one is going to be performed by doctors. </p>
<p>She’d performed the last one herself using dirty rubber piping and had been in near-death agony afterwards. But the ban on abortion at the time – and the ban on even receiving information about abortion – meant she’d had to deal with the blood, pain and risk of death in secret.</p>
<p>The reason she’d got to this point was hidden in another ward. There, I encountered hundreds of Romania’s “orphans”. They lay under once white blankets, in little glass boxes like museum exhibits behind glass. The room was as quiet as a provincial museum. At the time, having little experience of babies, I did not realise that the lack of crying was a sign of emotional deprivation. The nurses were kind but they were few and the babies many. The nurses could not attend to them when they cried so the babies had given up crying. It saved energy. These “orphans” probably had parents – but they’d been given away because their parents could not feed the children they already had.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155170/original/image-20170201-12656-17p1t8v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155170/original/image-20170201-12656-17p1t8v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155170/original/image-20170201-12656-17p1t8v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155170/original/image-20170201-12656-17p1t8v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155170/original/image-20170201-12656-17p1t8v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155170/original/image-20170201-12656-17p1t8v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1184&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155170/original/image-20170201-12656-17p1t8v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1184&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155170/original/image-20170201-12656-17p1t8v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1184&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Codruta, a Romanian orphan, at 13 years of age in 1990.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Angela Catlin</span></span>
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<p>The reason for “<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4629589.stm">Romania’s orphans</a>” was Ceaușescu’s fixation on achieving a larger workforce. Measures to grow the birth rate included a near-complete ban on abortion – and information about it – combined with extremely limited access to contraception (though some was smuggled in). There was workplace pregnancy-testing to ensure women didn’t arrange abortions themselves.</p>
<p>It was a policy which gifted Romania the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1949105">highest maternal mortality rates in Europe</a>, the highest number of deaths from abortion, and a generation of emotionally afflicted, malnourished “orphans” raised in miserable conditions until, after the revolution, charities (and philanthropists <a href="http://www.childrights.ro/media_articles.htm">such as JK Rowling</a>) supplied help and funds.</p>
<p>In Romania before the revolution it was illegal to have an abortion, it was illegal to talk about abortion, it was illegal to give anyone information about abortion. Yet as my experience shows – and works such as Gail Kligman’s <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520210752">The Politics of Duplicity, Controlling Reproduction in Ceaucescu’s Romania</a> confirm – women still had abortions. Some of the women I interviewed had friends who died from illegal abortions, but that didn’t stop them having one that was equally dangerous. </p>
<h2>Backwards step</h2>
<p>This is why Trump’s reinstatement of <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/mexico-city-policy-donald-trump-abortion-funding-ban-federal-money-global-gag-rule-a7542311.html">the “Mexico City” policy</a> on abortion and aid is so retrograde. All that will happen, as <a href="http://www.ippf.org/global-gag-rule">activists have pointed out</a>, is that in developing countries such as Nepal and in Sub-Saharan Africa life chances will be diminished and the abortion rate may even go up. </p>
<p>This result was observed in a <a href="http://www.who.int/bulletin/11-091660.pdf">World Health Organisation study</a> of a previous iteration of this policy which was brought in by George W Bush in 2001 and was rescinded in 2009 by Barack Obama. </p>
<p>The death rate of women in these countries will also climb. In the first year after abortion was legalised in Romania, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1949105">the maternal death rate fell by 50%.</a></p>
<p>This “gag” could have been offset if it had been matched by a vast increase in federal funds for contraception in those countries which are going to be affected. But – no surprises here – that hasn’t happened.</p>
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<p>This year is the 50th anniversary of the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1967/87/contents">Abortion Act</a> in the UK. The figures for death from illegal abortion prior to that year are hard to confirm but the <a href="https://www.rcog.org.uk/en/news/campaigns-and-opinions/human-fertilisation-and-embryology-bill/rcog-opinion-the-abortion-act-40-years-on/">Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists</a> states they were the leading cause of maternal death in the 12 years before the Act. </p>
<p>If women in a rich country died then through a lack of information and access to legal abortion, how much worse the plight of women in developing countries today. What this means globally is hungrier babies, reduced life chances and the needless death of young women in countries which are already struggling.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71949/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sharon Maxwell Magnus won the Rosemary Goodchild Award for her coverage of women’s health in the aftermath of the Romanian revolution.</span></em></p>The ‘global gag’ will not lower the rate of abortions, but it will increase misery and suffering.Sharon Maxwell Magnus, Principal Lecturer in Journalism, University of HertfordshireLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/454122015-08-13T05:56:15Z2015-08-13T05:56:15ZBetter policies are needed to support local adoptions for children orphaned by Ebola<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91103/original/image-20150807-9923-1qqvlu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Better policies could do a lot to help children orphaned by Ebola.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/unicefguinea/15463546618/in/photolist-pysHEJ-pQYZTJ-r5ndGw-oerhxP-rwjPiC-ryvKVC-sxxkhj-sQ8odZ-rTmqpZ-rT8Lto-sxFrin-sxzCX7-rT9CT1-sxxHwE-sPXwLS-rTm4wX-sxGSLV-sPWrsY-sQa1jP-sxF3Gk-sxysQq-sQ9qoD-rTkDaa-rTkcJR-sMQPCh-rTk88M-sPWYAQ-rT8bFU-pzfgiA-ocvwnC-oeri1x-ocAdRU-ocEnhB-oaC3rY-nVaX1B-oaC4wJ-oaC3YE-ocEmMt-nVbPzR-rJN9R3-pJhysz-nVazSf-rqyqtk-rqqYhq-roGdBZ">UNICEF Guinea</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>While the worst of the Ebola epidemic has passed, its impact is far from over for the orphans left behind. In Sierra Leone alone, a country of just over six million people, the Ebola epidemic has orphaned more than 12,000 children who have lost one or both family members, according to <a href="http://www.street-child.co.uk/ebola-orphan-report">Street Child</a>, a British charity.</p>
<p>It might seems like adoption is the most obvious solution to help these orphaned children. But adoption in this scenario, whether to relatives nearby or prospective parents overseas, is difficult. Instead, governments in West Africa and international aid agencies should help facilitate adoptions locally and provide better health care and education to support entire communities.</p>
<h2>Family adoption isn’t always easy</h2>
<p>I first went to Sierra Leone in 2005 as a Fulbright Scholar to research the impact of humanitarian aid on children and other vulnerable groups. The orphans I encountered faced many health and educational challenges, but they usually were not homeless. Instead, relatives within an extended family group cared for them.</p>
<p>Traditional adoption, however, is unlikely to help all Ebola orphans throughout West Africa. These orphans are often stigmatized by their association with the disease. In some cases, the orphans are also the only member of their extended family to survive. And the children who endured the disease often need additional medical attention for lingering health problems, such as poor eyesight and joint pain, which few families can cope with alone.</p>
<p>Arranging family adoption is also problematic, as Ebola orphans are clustered in separate communities. Francis Mason, director of the Conforti Community Aid Children Organization (CCACO) of Freetown, emphasized in an interview with me that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The problem is not so much of individual orphans but of groups of orphans in communities where whole families are missing. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the village of Romeni, located in Port Loko province, community members now struggle to care for 522 officially registered orphans. While Romeni, which had a pre-Ebola population of over 2,000, accepts responsibility for the children, the sheer numbers add to the economic stress caused by the epidemic. Food shortages are common, and even clothing the children is a problem. Many have only rags to wear. </p>
<p>In other cases, orphans have moved multiple times, having been taken from their home village to a distant Ebola Treatment Center, and then returned, only to be passed between relatives. Some are unable to be reunited with family members. </p>
<p>While on a recent visit to Port Loko, I learned of one small boy, age six, who became stranded in a care center in Bo, a city far away from his original home. While the boy knew his name, he was uncertain of his home. Despite repeated attempts to find relatives, his village has yet to be located, leaving him for an indefinite time in the care center, separated from family members.</p>
<h2>International adoption won’t help many children</h2>
<p>In past responses to epidemics, international adoption has helped to supplement local solutions. But in this case, foreign adoption is unlikely to be widely used. The policies of both national governments and international organizations make this process complex and lengthy. </p>
<p>In addition, <a>regional norms</a>, developed by the African Child Policy Forum (<a href="http://www.africanchildforum.org/en/index.php/en/">ACPF</a>), actively discourage adoption of Africans by foreigners. </p>
<p>According to Mark Montgomery, professor of economics at Grinnell College and an expert on international adoption, “Very few African countries allow more than a trickle of children to be adopted abroad.”</p>
<p>Although Sierra Leone does not officially prohibit adoption, prospective parents must fulfill a six-month residency requirement. The entire adoption process can take up to two years and includes mandatory field investigations by the US Department of State. </p>
<p>According to the State Department, only <a href="http://travel.state.gov/content/adoptionsabroad/en/country-information/learn-about-a-country/sierra-leone.html">33 children</a> from Sierra Leone were adopted by Americans in 2013.</p>
<h2>Policies to support orphans within their communities</h2>
<p>Adoption alone is unlikely to meet the needs of Ebola orphans. But an integrated approach that enhances traditional solutions with special measures for orphans, their families and their wider communities could do that.</p>
<p>A starting point for this strategy is to establish the legal status of orphans and secure their position with a family member or other caregiver. This may require outside intervention from international humanitarian agencies. It may be necessary to search for surviving relatives in another community or bring children from a distant treatment center back to their village. </p>
<p>In Sierra Leone, <a href="http://www.unicef.org/appeals/files/UNICEF_Sierra_Leone_EVD_Weekly_SitRep_15_July_2015.pdf">UNICEF</a>, in conjunction with the national <a href="http://mswgca.gov.sl/Ebola/index.html">Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs</a>, supports civil society groups that reunite Ebola orphans with family members and help to establish guardianship. Children may be moved from one home to another if their current family setting is unsuitable.</p>
<p>Orphans also need to be protected from the danger of illegal activities. “Ebola has put children more at risk for child trafficking, child abuse, and child labor,” says Haley Clark, Child Protection Officer at <a href="http://www.worldhope.org/locations/africa">World Hope International</a>, an American humanitarian organization, who spoke with me in Freetown. She says that there needs to be more coordination between aid and support services to address human trafficking and child labor in both rural and urban settings. </p>
<p>Most importantly, support for individual orphans could be combined with broader community development efforts that address education, health care, food security and housing. This approach would supplement major initiatives undertaken by the <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2014/09/25/world-bank-group-nearly-double-funding-ebola-crisis-400-million">World Bank</a> to improve medical care in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. In addition, orphans need targeted support efforts in places that are former Ebola hot-spots.</p>
<p>For instance, support for local schools in villages hard-hit by Ebola will help not only orphans but also other children as well. Greater attention to clean water and adequate sanitation in both urban and rural areas is especially important, as improvements in these areas can help to prevent the outbreak of future epidemics.</p>
<p>Greater integration between programs targeted at individual orphans and those designed to help their wider community can help heal the ravages of the Ebola epidemic.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45412/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claudena Skran received funding from the US government - Fulbright Fellowship (2005-06) and UNHCR - consultant (2011-12) to conduct research on aid projects in Sierra Leone. She is affiliated with the Kidsgive - Sierra Leone scholarship program, supported by Lawrence University and private donors..</span></em></p>Governments in West Africa and international aid agencies should help facilitate adoptions locally and provide better health care and education to support entire communities.Claudena Skran, Professor of Government and West Professor of Economics and Social Science, Lawrence UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/421082015-05-25T01:28:53Z2015-05-25T01:28:53ZYour child is missing. Would you want their adoption to be easier?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82659/original/image-20150522-12512-1l7iadh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Millions of children in overseas orphanages ... would dearly love to have parents', claims Tony Abbott, and his government is making intercountry adoption easier.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.intercountryadoption.gov.au/">Screenshot/Intercountry Adoption Australia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Imagine for one moment your child went missing. It’s a common enough event worldwide for today, May 25, to be declared <a href="http://www.missingpersons.gov.au/awareness/campaigns/youthchildrens-day">International Missing Children’s Day</a>. Surely you would expect no stone to be left unturned to find your child - even if took six months, a year, or two. </p>
<p>But how would you feel if your child was permanently given to someone else before this happened? This is exactly what happens to many families around the world. Parents are targeted by recruiters and children are bought or <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/07/kidnapped-and-sold-inside-the-dark-world-of-child-trafficking-in-china/278107/">stolen and sold</a>. Other children are lost, separated by war or disaster, or left for temporary safekeeping in children’s homes.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Some intercountry adoptions involve children stolen from their parents.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Pushing adoption of ‘millions of orphans’</h2>
<p>Last week, Prime Minister Tony Abbott <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/new-agency-to-guide-parents-who-want-to-adopt-children-from-overseas-20150516-gh34d8.html">launched a new government agency and website</a> promoting intercountry adoption, and repeated <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-business-of-orphanages-where-do-orphans-come-from-38485">the dubious claim</a> that “there are millions of children in overseas orphanages who would dearly love to have parents”. It’s part of a multi-million-dollar <a href="http://www.intercountryadoption.gov.au/">service for prospective and adoptive parents</a> intended to speed up adoptions of children from overseas. </p>
<p>The website rehashes what prospective and adoptive parents already know through state and federal departments. There is no information for adult intercountry adoptees, no additional post-adoption support, no research publications – apart from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare <a href="http://www.aihw.gov.au/adoptions/">yearly reports</a> – and no information about who is staffing this call centre. All in all, it’s a costly exercise for not much return. </p>
<p>The same pressures we see operating in Australia are <a href="http://www.brandeis.edu/investigate/adoption/">more intense at the international level</a>. For <a href="http://aaf.sagepub.com/content/24/2/45.short?rss=1&ssource=mfc">over 60 years</a> the focus of many national governments and adoption agencies has not been on re-uniting children with their families. Instead the aim has been to adopt children as quickly as possible.</p>
<p>Over the years many cases have shown that even when families do find their children they are not returned once separation is made permanent through adoption. These cases become more complicated, adversarial and unresolvable the older children become.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The case of an Indian family whose daughter was kidnapped for adoption is not an isolated one.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Quick and easy’ runs counter to proper process</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.hcch.net/upload/outline33e.pdf">subsidiarity principle</a> outlined in the <a href="http://www.hcch.net/index_en.php?act=text.display&tid=45">Hague Convention provisions on adoption</a> requires governments to consider in-country solutions first. This is one of the issues scheduled for discussion at the <a href="http://www.hcch.net/index_en.php?act=progress.listing&cat=8">Special Commission meeting</a> of the Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) in June 2015. </p>
<p>According to the <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx">Convention on the Rights of the Child</a> and the subsidiarity principle in the Hague Convention on intercountry adoption, children have a right to be raised by their families, families are entitled to support, and suitable <a href="http://www.unicef.org/protection/alternative_care_Guidelines-English.pdf">in-country alternative care must be provided</a>. </p>
<p>Where intercountry adoption is an option, re-unification is usually not extensively pursued if at all. Not finding the child’s family, or failing to provide families with support, turns on the green light for adoptions to proceed. Children become “abandoned” or <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-business-of-orphanages-where-do-orphans-come-from-38485">“orphans” on paper</a> for this purpose.</p>
<p>For many, the convention on adoption is interpreted as a means to make adoption happen quickly. Thus, if re-unification with family members takes too long, adoption can be considered (see chapter six of the Hague Convention <a href="http://www.hcch.net/upload/adoguide_e.pdf">Guide to Good Practice</a>). </p>
<p>Few resources are committed to a child’s right to their family and culture. A child’s right to their family is often <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/investigate/adoption/bgop-ed.html">over-ridden by a Western view</a> of what “family” means and a sense of urgency for permanency through adoption. Intercountry adoption in the “best interests” of children is well resourced. </p>
<p>This presents complex questions as children should have stability, but there are other ways of providing good care and stability until the need for adoption is properly determined. The mantra of “children looking for a permanent family” is often used in adoption circles to justify adoption, but at what point does “permanent family” no longer mean their own family? It is important that children are not legally separated from their families and countries until all avenues, including family assistance, are legitimately exhausted.</p>
<p>The risk is that influential parties who support speedier and easier adoptions will use the Hague meeting in June to push for time frames that will effectively extinguish re-unification possibilities and legitimise unnecessarily speedy processes.</p>
<p>Searching and re-unification are time-consuming and resource-intensive. But these processes are not impossible and are undertaken by some international and smaller organisations. An Australian adoptee was even able to find his own family in India using Google Earth.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">One adoptee in Australia tracked down his own family in India using Google Earth.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A problem arises when the agency tasked with finding a child’s family is often the same one facilitating adoptions. Some seem to believe that there is nothing wrong with an open market in children where children move seamlessly across borders in both directions much like goods and services in global economies and trade agreements. Others have a commitment to safeguarding children’s rights and the rights of families affected by adoption who do not have a voice, and are concerned about the long-term effects on everyone when adoptions are not conducted well.</p>
<p>Adoption as the permanency solution appears to have taken on a religious fervour to the exclusion of all else. But one size never fits all.</p>
<h2>Focus must be on original family first</h2>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_adoption">Open adoptions</a> will also be under discussion at the Hague as a means of offering a remedial response to the separation of families. Where adoption does occur, open adoption is important.</p>
<p>However, the realities of intercountry adoption may mean this is just an aspiration – assuming the definition refers to open and continuing relationships between the children, their families and adoptive families. Because there are no enforcements for adoptive parents to continue such costly and emotionally difficult arrangements, it is likely to remain aspirational. </p>
<p>A small number of adoptive parents most certainly do establish and maintain contact, especially in those cases where they have discovered corruption or child trafficking. These adoptive parents have gone out of their way to find the child’s family, placing the child’s needs first.</p>
<p>It would be a sad day if discussions about the subsidiarity principle resulted in setting time frames to speed up intercountry adoptions, instead of redirecting resources to re-unification, family sustainability and appropriate in-country care before adoption is considered. A proper process benefits everyone. </p>
<p>So what should “proper process” mean? I suppose it comes down to what you would expect if it was your child who was missing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42108/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patricia Fronek does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Most of the world’s ‘orphans’ are not orphans at all and many are caught up in a global trade in meeting demand for adoption. Making intercountry adoption easier adds to the risks for these children.Patricia Fronek, Senior Lecturer, School of Human Services and Social Work, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/411652015-05-05T20:16:05Z2015-05-05T20:16:05ZEarthquake orphans: what Nepal can learn from Haiti<p>Following the earthquake in 2010, Westerners flocked to Haiti to “rescue” orphaned and lost children. The “rescue” included the evacuation of children by plane for inter-country adoption and an increase in the number of children placed in orphanages in the following months. The problem that has since emerged is that many of the “orphans” placed in orphanages and sent for adoption were not orphaned at all.</p>
<h2>Many ‘orphans’ had one or both parents</h2>
<p>As part of the earthquake response, the Haitian government <a href="http://www.rescue.org/news/international-rescue-committee-says-foreign-adoptions-haitian-children-are-still-premature-aid-">expedited inter-country adoptions</a> that were already underway.</p>
<p>They temporarily suspended any new adoptions in order to protect children. Scandal in Haiti soon erupted when <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/02/04/haiti.arrests/">10 missionaries were charged with child abduction</a> after trying to take 33 children out of the country without permission (as they were not orphans).</p>
<p>Another 53 children were airlifted by a US governor for adoption, only to find that <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/world/americas/24orphans.html?_r=0">12 of them weren’t in fact orphans</a>. The Haitian situation <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/05/10/the-last-babylift">revealed inter-country adoption</a> should hold a very limited place in the immediate disaster response.</p>
<p>Instead of housing lost children temporarily while families were located, orphanages became a permanent solution in Haiti. The problem has only worsened since 2010. Statistics indicate that up to 80% of 30,000 children currently in orphanages in Haiti are not orphans and could live at home with one or both parents. </p>
<p>It is a statistic that is shared by Nepal, which has just suffered an earthquake of 7.9 magnitude. Nepal already struggles with the issue of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/may/27/nepal-bogus-orphan-trade-voluntourism">unscrupulous orphanage operators</a>. Nepal’s children may become victim to the “rescue” mentality of people meaning well but potentially causing harm in the long run.</p>
<p>So, what can Nepal learn from Haiti and other natural disasters to protect its children in these post-earthquake days?</p>
<p>When disaster strikes, already vulnerable children are put even more at risk. Natural disasters can lead to children being separated from their families. There is a tendency to deal with this situation by <a href="http://wearelumos.org/stories/families-emergency-situations">placing children in orphanages</a>. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.wearelumos.org/stories/keeping-families-together-emergency-situations">The research</a> shows that this action can result in the production of “paper orphans” (children who are orphans through virtue of falsified paper documents only) and can <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-business-of-orphanages-where-do-orphans-come-from-38485">fuel the business model of orphanages</a>.</p>
<h2>The Aceh tsunami</h2>
<p>Prior to the Haitian earthquake, the international community responded to the tsunami in Aceh in 2004. Unfortunately, it seems that the lessons from Aceh were not learnt in Haiti. In post-tsunami Aceh, there was also a huge increase in the number of children placed in orphanages. </p>
<p><a href="http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/A33B5EE2179FE21FC1257230004FC11A-sc-idn-27nov.pdf">Research showed</a> that the explosion in aid following the tsunami was a critical factor in the increase in residential care facilities, or orphanages, being established. </p>
<p>The aid poured into orphanages from privately funded non-government organisations as well as domestic and international governments. In that context, 85% of children living in orphanages following the tsunami had at least one parent alive. </p>
<p>It was further determined that in 97.5% of cases the parents had placed their child in the orphanage for education purposes. This indicates other programs focusing on educational support, instead of orphanages, may have produced better outcomes for children. </p>
<h2>Nepal learning from other natural disasters</h2>
<p>Heeding these lessons, child protection organisations working in Nepal are focusing on ensuring that separated children are quickly <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2015/05/04/4228900.htm">reunited with their families</a> and not placed in orphanages unnecessarily. </p>
<p>Agencies have created “<a href="http://www.wvi.org/nepal-earthquake/gallery/world-vision-opens-safe-places-children-recover-nepal-earthquake">Child Friendly Spaces</a>” to help children work through the trauma associated with the earthquake, and also to monitor children that require assistance.</p>
<p>Some child protection organisations have addressed the inter-country adoption issue directly. Children’s charity SOS Children’s Villages <a href="http://www.soschildrensvillages.ca/international-adoptions-and-the-nepal-earthquake-837">posted a notice on their website</a> immediately after the earthquake explaining why inter-country adoption was not an appropriate option at this stage. </p>
<p>Fortunately, Nepal tightened its inter-country adoption laws in the past few years. There has been no immediate suggestion of relaxing them in order to expedite adoptions, as happened in Haiti.</p>
<p>There has also been a major focus on encouraging people to donate money rather than <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/27/earthquake-nepal-dont-rush-help-volunteers-aid">rushing to Nepal</a> to volunteer in the aid effort. In the child protection space, the clear message is that orphanage voluntourism, where people volunteer in orphanages in developing countries, <a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/10985867_972753006102795_4789826867917173453_n.png?oh=cbd143d309a6c08b1bbcc17c8763f90c&oe=55CA6B6E&__gda__=1439099396_4b907c41b48c93e37afd25f6eee0d74f">is not desirable or required</a>. </p>
<p>It appears <a href="http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/10-inconvenient-truths-about-voluntourism.html">the message</a> is beginning to resonate. People are starting to understand that <a href="http://www.nextgenerationnepal.org/File/The-Paradox-of-Orphanage-Volunteering.pdf">good intentions can lead to harmful outcomes</a> for vulnerable children. This is only amplified in the current situation.</p>
<p>Overall, it appears the response to the vulnerable children of the Nepal earthquake is implementing the lessons learnt from Haiti. Prior to the earthquake, Nepal committed to <a href="http://www.ekantipur.com/the-kathmandu-post/2014/02/27/top-story/raids-on-orphanages/259790.html">monitoring and closing</a> unregistered and non-compliant orphanages. The hope is that as aid floods into the small developing nation, this commitment will be remembered, upheld and implemented. </p>
<p>Nepal and its children have a long road to recovery ahead. Let’s hope they, and the international community, are wise enough to implement the lessons from the past in order to protect the future of their children.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41165/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate van Doore is affiliated with Forget Me Not.</span></em></p>Following the earthquake in 2010, people flocked to Haiti to “rescue” orphaned and lost children. The problem that has since emerged is that many of the “orphans” placed in orphanages and sent for adoption, were not orphaned at all.Kate van Doore, Lecturer in Law, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/384852015-03-09T18:49:36Z2015-03-09T18:49:36ZThe business of orphanages: where do ‘orphans’ come from?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74007/original/image-20150306-3284-1jam94v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The number of orphanages in developing nations has dramatically increased in the past decade, driven by a fraudulent trade in 'paper orphans'.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ihhinsaniyardimvakfi/8475155967">IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recently, Friends International launched the “<a href="http://www.thinkchildsafe.org/thinkbeforedonating/">Don’t create more orphans</a>” campaign confronting the issue of orphanages as profit-driven businesses. The number of orphanages in developing nations has dramatically increased in the past decade, but where are the “orphans” coming from?</p>
<p>In 2009, Save the Children reported that internationally <a href="http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/sites/default/files/docs/Keeping_Children_Out_of_Harmful_Institutions_Final_20.11.09_1.pdf">four out of five children</a> living in orphanages were not orphans. The report noted that poor families were coerced into giving up their children by unscrupulous institutions hoping to profit from either the residence or trafficking of their children.</p>
<p>These children are known as “paper orphans” - children who have orphan status through falsified documentation. This problem has been detailed by reports in <a href="http://www.tdh.ch/en/documents/adopting-the-rights-of-the-child">Nepal</a>, <a href="http://www.unicef.org/cambodia/Study_Attitudes_towards_RC-English.pdf">Cambodia</a>, <a href="http://www.irinnews.org/report/84582/west-africa-protecting-children-from-orphan-dealers">Ghana</a> and <a href="http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/sites/default/files/docs/A_last_resort_1.pdf">Uganda</a>, as well as other developing nations.</p>
<h2>Where do ‘paper orphans’ come from?</h2>
<p>The reports tell the <a href="http://www.nextgenerationnepal.org/File/Next-Generation-Nepal_FAQs-on-Orphanage-Trafficking-and-Orphanage-Voluntourism.pdf">same story</a>. “Recruiters” target families in rural areas with limited access to education for their children. They convince the family that their child will receive a better education and future in a boarding school. The recruiters often collect several children from a village under this guise and then depart with the children to a city. </p>
<p>In the city, the children are often sold into orphanages (if not into another form of exploitation). Once in an orphanage, the children become “paper orphans”, with names changed, death certificates for parents forged and requests for family contact denied. </p>
<p>Families are unable to locate their children due to these changes of identity. If parents are fortunate enough to locate them, they are advised that they have relinquished their rights to the child and are not allowed to see them.</p>
<p>There are detailed cases of children then being placed for <a href="http://www.brandeis.edu/investigate/adoption/docs/FPFinalTheLieWeLove.pdf">inter-country adoption</a>, but there is limited academic attention to what happens to the children who remain in the orphanages. These children are subject to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/orphanage-trips-by-aussie-schools-are-doing-more-harm-than-good-38035">usual issues</a> associated with long-term institutionalisation, with the added trauma of being forced to lie about their orphanhood.</p>
<p>The orphanage <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/world/stealing-a-generation-cambodias-unfolding-tragedy-20130406-2hdy2.html">profits</a> in many ways from the presence of these “paper orphans”. Some orphanages encourage volunteers to come and spend time with the children, profiting through the fees they charge and lower care costs due to the free labour that volunteers provide. Others have their “orphans” <a href="http://www.thinkchildsafe.org/en/content/tip4/qna.html">dance or sing</a> to encourage donations.</p>
<p>These practices are harmful to the child who learns that their worth and value is determined by their orphanhood.</p>
<h2>Confronting our participation</h2>
<p>If you’ve previously been an orphanage volunteer, or contributed to an orphanage, it’s natural to feel confronted by Friends International’s campaign. The premise of the campaign is that, by donating to orphanages, you are contributing to a business model that commodifies children and takes them from their families. I understand how confronting it is as I was one such volunteer.</p>
<p>As a board member of the international NGO, <a href="http://forgetmenot.org.au/">Forget Me Not</a>, I helped establish and fund best-practice orphanages in Nepal and Uganda. However, upon discovering that the children in our care were <a href="http://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/u-on-sunday-feature-the-lost-children/story-fn6ck8la-1226139832771">paper orphans</a>, the organisation focused on finding the families of the children and reintegrating them. </p>
<p>The organisation no longer funds orphanages, but focuses on rescuing children from exploitative orphanages and returning them to where they belong. This experience led me to research the <a href="http://www.podsocs.com/podcast/from-orphanhood-to-trafficked/">legal position</a> of paper orphans and how we might address the issue.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74010/original/image-20150306-3306-1o7fwpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74010/original/image-20150306-3306-1o7fwpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74010/original/image-20150306-3306-1o7fwpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74010/original/image-20150306-3306-1o7fwpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74010/original/image-20150306-3306-1o7fwpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74010/original/image-20150306-3306-1o7fwpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74010/original/image-20150306-3306-1o7fwpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74010/original/image-20150306-3306-1o7fwpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Our involvement in orphanages supports the process by which these children become orphans, despite our good intentions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/petebackwards/429594883/in/photolist-bUXTKz-bUXTwV-DXNkN-cck9Uf-cckaqj-DXMAk-k3KhM-DXNqG-DXNx7-bUXVZM-bUXVnr-bUXTZT-DXMLw-DXNF3-DXMWT-DXNdi-DXN4H-8NxyYu-8Nut2z-8NxyEW-8NutvD-8NutgH-k3Czh-71ELVE-71AL8P-6pemvd-6pepEu-6paeMc-6peqRd-6pacdF-6peoAJ-6padU4-6penHG-6pekq7-8Ujwiz-7KWi1F-7KWi2n-aBg4Uj-aBdk8p-aBg6rU-aBdnJ8-aBg6ZN-aBdsgF-aBdn1z-aBdrhR-aBdkuk-aBg5Vd-aBg9DA-aBg8vE-aBdo4e">Flickr/Pete</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What is the solution?</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.thinkchildsafe.org/thinkbeforevisiting/resources/STC_keeing_children_out_of_insitutions_why_we_should_invest_in_family_based_care.pdf">research</a> points to family or community-based care being the solution. Orphanages are not the answer. Instead we should be returning children to <a href="http://www.thinkchildsafe.org/thinkbeforevisiting/resources/Families_Not_Orphanages_J_Williamson.pdf">family-style care</a> and supporting families to keep their children at home. </p>
<p>Even where children are bona fide orphans, the research shows that orphanages are <a href="http://www.unicef.org/cambodia/12681_23295.html">never beneficial</a>. Community care is best.</p>
<p>There is clear evidence that volunteering and/or funding orphanages is <a href="http://www.nextgenerationnepal.org/File/The-Paradox-of-Orphanage-Volunteering.pdf">fuelling the demand</a> for paper orphans and orphanages. There is a movement to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/17/jk-rowling-fairytale-orphanage-lumos">close all orphanages globally by 2050</a> and awareness is growing about the <a href="http://www.bettercarenetwork.nl/content/17382/download/clnt/55412_Overview-_Volunteering_in_RCCs.pdf">harm that volunteering</a> and funding can do, despite the best of intentions.</p>
<p>UNICEF suggests that tourists and volunteers should <a href="http://www.unicef.org/cambodia/Fact_sheet_-_residential_care_Cambodia.pdf">refrain from visiting or donating</a> to orphanages. Instead, we should concentrate on supporting programs that encourage family reunification or community-based care.</p>
<p>Australian organisations like <a href="http://forgetmenot.org.au/who-we-are/our-story/">Forget Me Not</a> and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/austory/specials/thehouseoftara/default.htm">Cambodia Children’s Trust</a>
both started out supporting orphanages, but after discovering the facts, have transformed their programs. These organisations are doing excellent work in reintegrating paper orphans with their families. </p>
<p>They are part of the new wave of NGOs focusing on supporting children within their family structures. Governments are also <a href="https://www.childfund.org.au/blog/response-head-first-episode-orphanage-tourism">actively working</a> with UN agencies and other NGOs to close orphanages and improve child protection mechanisms.</p>
<p>We know that orphanages harm children. We know these children deserve more than to be products of the orphanage business. It’s time to transform that knowledge into action.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38485/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate van Doore is affiliated with Forget Me Not.</span></em></p>The number of orphanages in developing nations has dramatically increased in the past decade, but where are the “orphans” coming from?Kate van Doore, Lecturer in Law, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.