FOSTER CARE VS. ORPHANAGES

Effects of living in foster care vs. Living in orphanages



Effects of living in foster care vs. Living in orphanages

Many orphanages were set up in the United States by religious organizations during the 18th and 19th centuries. However, over time, concerns rose about poor­ conditions and discriminatory policies, particularly during the Civil Rights movement. Orphanages became associated with a low standard of care -- barracks-like accommodations, a lack of mental health and support services, poor food and insufficient funding. Following World War II, most orphanages in the U.S. began closing. Take the Windy City as an example. In the early 1970s, almost every orphanage in Chicago was shut down by the Illinois Department of Children and Family. Half of the city's orphanages had already closed between 1945 and 1960. Over the past few decades, orphanages in the U.S. have been largely replaced with smaller institutions that try to provide a group home or boarding school environment. Most children who would have been in orphanages are in these residential treatment centers (RTC) or foster care.

Residential treatment centers, the modern descendent of orphanages, provide housing, mental health services, education and recreation. In testimony before the House Ways & Means Subcommittee on Human Resources for the Hearing on Promoting Adoption and Other Permanent Placements, Nan Dale, CEO of Children's Village in New York, described her facility as “more like a boarding school than an orphanage -- more like a children's psychiatric hospital than an orphanage.” ”It is a highly structured, heavily supervised boarding school with intense treatment services for children and their families” Dale said. Expressing deep opposition to bringing back orphanages, Dale spoke of the complex issues facing children such as those who come to Children's Village, many of whom are victims of severe neglect or abuse and have behavioral and psychological problems. Bringing back orphanages would not solve many of the problems, Dale said, and instead there must be a ”full array of services” for children and families: preventive services to keep families together, foster families, adoption services, different types of group care facilities, after care and independent living services. Strong evidence indicates that residential group care works well for troubled children, and bringing back orphanages would, in Dale's words, mean” dropping down a rung on the evolutionary ladder”.

In fact, many children now trapped in foster care would be far better off if they remained with their own families even if those families got only the typical help (which tends to be little help, wrong help, or no help) commonly offered by child welfare agencies.

That's the message from the largest studies ever undertaken to compare the impact on children of foster care versus keeping comparably maltreated children with their own families. The study was the subject of a front-page story in USA Today. The full study is available here.

The first study, published in 2007, looked at outcomes for more than 15,000 children. It compared foster children not to the general population but to comparably-maltreated children left in their ...