orphanage

Stop Hitting Kids With a Hammer

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hamerI recently went out to lunch with a friend from Thailand. He’s an American who moved there several years ago with his family to open an orphanage. Within a couple of years, he had a revelation and shifted his entire ministry from orphanage work to doing everything in his power to keep healthy families together, he is passionately anti-orphanage. We had a great time.

Now you might be asking why I would take the time to meet with someone who is working against what I’ve spent most of my life building. He’s never going to be a donor, he’s never going to “come around” and open an orphanage again. He knows we’re not closing down our home and we’re not a donor (he mainly travels for fundraising). So why do we make it a point to get together whenever we can? It’s an “iron sharpens iron” thing. We make each other better, we both understand that we are an important part of the eclectic mix of ways to care for at-risk children.

Most of the time if there is a serious issue people feel passionately about, there is very little room for them to look at it from a different angle. Once someone is set on their ideal, everyone else must be wrong. A short glance at most Facebook feeds is a good example. So many people are feverishly posting about their pet topic, while “un-friending” anyone who might disagree with them or have the nerve to question an opinion.

The problem is, in most of the larger issues plaguing society, there might be several answers to the same question. How do we help with the homeless situation? How do we address the opioid problem in the US? How do we improve education? Ask 20 different people these questions and you’ll get 20 different, frequently very strong, opinions. Maybe, just maybe, the answer is; we need several different answers and many of them might be right.

Every society has a percentage of children that wind up in the “system,” whatever that system might be. There have been orphaned and abandoned children for thousands of years and we still haven’t figured out what to do about it. Most countries shift over decades from orphanages to foster care, neither are great. Some policies push for keeping families together at all cost, this is frequently a nightmare for the child due to abuse or severe neglect. So what is the answer? We need it all. We need every tool in the box. We need to understand each child and situation is different and should be handled in its own way. This is NOT easy.

Keep families together: This is ideal, whenever a family is broken up it’s a horrible thing. Some families need a little push of coaching to keep it together. Maybe it’s marriage or financial counseling. Maybe a free or cheap daycare so both parents can work. Perhaps a short-term loan or a one time gift to keep a family from becoming homeless or having their children wind up in the system. Sometimes, when abuse or severe neglect is going on, it is best to break up the family.

Foster Care: When a family can’t, won’t, or shouldn’t care for their child, and extended family is not an option, foster care can work. It’s not great, and it always depends on the quality of the foster family. Foster care is the direction many countries go to over time. It works, but it’s not an ideal situation. Lack of stability is a real problem as children are moved around for many reasons. Put yourself in a child’s place; if we had to change housing, churches, schools, relationships, etc. every few months, we’d probably have some issues also.

Orphanages: Orphanages have been used for a very long time. Unfortunately, many orphanages around the world are underfunded or run by the wrong people with the wrong motivations. Some outstanding homes do a great job with the children, raising them up to be healthy physically, emotionally, and ready for life. The problem is the great homes are the exception. Many homes are run by people that love children and want to help, but they are in over their heads when it comes to fundraising, staff training, etc. Without solid management, orphanages can be a disaster.

Adoption: Adoption, when it works, can be fantastic. We love to see our children adopted into loving, stable homes. Unfortunately, many children are not adoptable. Once a child is over five years old, the odds of adoption drop to almost nothing. Many children have multiple siblings, or there could be a family member still in the picture that might eventually be able to take them back. For the vast majority of children in any system, adoption doesn’t happen.

Listed above are just four options for children at risk. We need to use them all and stop trying to fit every child into the one system we are personally in favor of. Sometimes a child isn’t a good fit for one particular system of care. You might have heard the saying: “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” If we stay focused on the one solution we have at our disposal, we miss out on the many other tools that might be available. We need to use the correct tool for the job of helping at-risk children. We need to stop hitting kids with a hammer and reach for the right tool.

What is an Orphan?

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Armenian_orphans_in_Aleppo_collected_from_Arabs_by_Karen_Jeppe

What is the definition of orphan? I know this sounds pretty straightforward but depending on who you talk to the definition of what an orphan is can vary widely. Most people assume that an orphan is a child that has no parents. But orphan can also define many other situations where the child might have a parent or two; they just aren’t around to care for the child. Both UNICEF and World Vision define an orphan as a child who has lost one or both parents.

I, along with an exceptional team, run a large orphanage. We care for about 120 children from newborn up through adulthood in a family like setting. The bulk of our children are not technically orphans in the traditional sense; this sometimes surprises people. “If they’re not an orphan, why are they in your home?” Well, it gets complicated.

If a parent or parents are in prison, rehab, or some other institutional situation where they can’t care for their child, the child needs to go somewhere. Frequently there is no extended family available or willing to care for the thousands of children whose parents are no longer in their lives. These children are technically not “orphans” but still need a home. Of the children in our care, 70% will never see blood relatives again. The parents might be out there somewhere; it’s just that reunification is impossible. We are big fans of adoption, but it’s not a reality for most children. Because there are still parents somewhere, the children are older, or there are siblings in the picture, adoptions are pretty rare.

Some children are brought to us due to severe abuse or neglect. Some have gone through things that would rip your heart out if I were to detail them here. Even though they have been removed from a home situation for their protection, they still technically have parents and are not “orphans.” They need to be cared for, counseled, and brought to a place of healing.

Occasionally a woman will give birth and for any number of reasons decide to abandon that child. The mother might be too young, they might have hidden the pregnancy, or they don’t want to acknowledge it, they might be going through some deep psychological issues. For whatever reason, in any society, a percentage of infants are abandoned by their parents. Once again these children are not technically orphans, they have parents somewhere. These abandoned children need to be cared for and raised in a way to show them how valuable they are. They need to be shown that they are not a mistake or just something to be thrown away. Being abandoned at that level leaves some deep scars.

The work of orphan care is rarely black-and-white, there are a vast amount of gray areas that we work in every day. Many people accuse orphanages of breaking up families just for the sake of filling their dorms. I’m not saying some orphanages haven’t done this, or even continue to do this, but in my experience, it’s less frequent than some people would lead you to believe.

Most of our children are referred to us by social workers just like they would be assigned to foster care families in the US, but occasionally a child will be brought to us by a parent asking us to take their child. We will do everything in our power to keep the family together. Whether it’s counseling, short-term financial help, housing, etc. we fight to keep families together. We’ve even gone so far as hiring qualified single mothers so that they could stay here with their children in a safe place. We feel a healthy family is without a doubt the very best option for a child. Unfortunately, for many children, the family option is not on the table.

So why this rambling explanation of the difficulties of defining an orphan? I just wanted to bring up the idea that orphan care can be very nuanced, complicated, and it can be hard to peg down solid answers. Orphaned and abandoned children don’t fit into our preconceived boxes. In any ministry, there are Solomon like judgment calls made frequently. What is your definition of homeless? What is your definition of a “special needs” child? Words and definitions matter a great deal, but the realities are people are messy, and we need to meet them where they are. We are all on a sliding scale of messed up. Just because a child doesn’t fit our exact definition of orphan, doesn’t mean they don’t have needs. Too many children in this world are desperate for a place to call home, filled with people who genuinely care about them.

In orphan care, we need to see each child as God sees us. God sees each one of us as individuals with needs, desires, and profound pains that are uniquely our own. Psalm 68:5 says, “Father of the fatherless and protector of widows, is God in his holy habitation.” God cares deeply for each one of his children. He cares so deeply for us; we should also care for those lost children all around us, whether it’s a true orphan, an abandoned child, or the lonely child next door or in our church. There are more “orphans” among us than we might realize: act accordingly.

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Orphan Care is a Short-Term Gig

djschuetze2 Comments

pexels-photo-167300When caring for children at risk, children who are abandoned or orphaned, it’s important to realize it’s just for a season. You need to know that, for many reasons, children you’re caring for are going to leave. We need to be ready for it, and we need to help them be ready for it.

Frequently children leave your care to go into questionable situations, and it will rip your heart out. Sometimes we initiate the change; usually it’s outside influences. Sometime they will head into great situations, some not so great. As people who are called to serve children, we need to realize the time we have with the children in our care is frequently shorter than it should be, and that time is precious. “Normal” parents have at least eighteen years to speak into a child’s life; we don’t have that luxury. The short time we have with these children will impact them the rest of their lives.

I have been in orphan care for almost 25 years. I still remember my first year, when the team here decided that we needed to kick a teen boy, Raul, out of the orphanage. Think about that for a minute: a child who’s already been abandoned, we were going to remove from what I thought we were building as the last refuge. This teen boy had become so rebellious, and such a danger to the other children and staff, that we needed to remove him from our home. We tried every form of discipline and professional counseling we could, but nothing broke through. His tearful pleading for “one last chance” as he was being taken away to a smaller, stricter orphanage will be burned into my memory forever. His departure tore me up for weeks.

About five years ago a 15-year-old girl, Maria, who had been in our care for several years was returned to her mother. We didn’t feel great about it, nor did Maria, but we didn’t have a say in the matter. All we could do was watch her leave and hope and pray that the social worker made the right decision.

Recently, two wonderful young girls were returned by our government social worker to their parents. We did not believe for a moment this was a good thing. For a number of reasons we did not feel this was the right decision, but the social workers had completed home visits and felt it was right to return these girls to their family. The girls had shared with us the horrible treatment they had received in their home and when the parents visited we could see it was just an unhealthy situation. It was VERY frustrating, and several of our staff were very upset, but you can only do what you can do.

It can be a long hard battle as we fight for what’s best for a child. Ask anyone who works in foster care about the frustrations experienced as children are moved around and often placed back with unstable or questionable family. Don’t get me wrong, when it’s a healthy situation I am 100% in favor of the family reunification. But frequently these are Solomon like decisions made by well-meaning but fallible people. When the decision is right it’s great; when the decision is wrong, it places children in harm’s way.

All we can do is plant the seeds, pray over our children, and hope for the best. Whether it’s our biological children that get married and move on when they become adults, or a temporary care situation and the child leaves us when they are much younger, their future is not in our control. All we can do is give them tools they will need to make healthy decisions. We need to show them how to handle the incredible challenges that life will place in their paths. They, like us, are in God’s hands.

About ten years after we “kicked Raul out,” he dropped by for a visit. We had lost track of him and assumed we would never see him again. But, the time he spent with us had a deep and positive impact on his life. He came back with his wife and two children to show them where he had spent several years and to introduce us. We had a long talk, and he shared that he now understands why he needed to be moved. He also now felt it was the best decision we could have made for his life. It was hard, but it was a wake-up call for him. It turned his life around, and he was now doing well with a family of his own.

A few weeks ago Maria got in contact with us, and we went out to lunch. We were right about her mom. Maria’s mother ignored her, never put her in school, and spent most of her time drinking and partying. After several months with mom Maria went with dad, who was no better. But, Maria remembered what she had been taught. She is now on her own, doing well, active in a church, and is planning her wedding. The seeds we planted took root.

There is a point to this rambling blog. What we do in child care, while we can, matters more than we know. Not all stories have happy endings. Most of the time we will never know about the lives of the children once they leave us. But when it works, the moments when we emotionally connect with a child, the time we spend listening to them, the examples we set changes lives. Use what little time you have as the precious gift it is.

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress…” James 1:27

(Names were changed to protect the privacy of people mentioned here.)

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In Orphan Care, One Size Doesn’t Fit All

djschuetze2 Comments

child-children-girl-happyWe’ve all received gifts that say “One-size-fits-all”; this really means “One size will fit some people and will be a poor fit for others, but that’s all we’re offering.” In orphan care, rarely does one-size-fits-all. Each child and situation is unique, and we need to be in a position to give the type of care that is the perfect fit for that individual child in need.

It seems as though society as a whole is more and more polarized. “It must be my way or nothing; you are wrong.” Try to get a Fox news fan to agree with a CNN fan, and you can see how people can NOT come to a compromise. The reality is, with many of life’s dilemmas, there are no black and white answers, sometimes the answers are found in the fuzzy middle. Many times life requires a much more nuanced approach.

Few things elicit a stronger opinion than what to do with the kids who are orphaned, abandoned, or need placement for other reasons. Everyone has an opinion on child rearing and how best to help a child. The prevailing theories shift back and forth from orphanage to group homes to foster care every few years, not unlike the “expert” opinions on whether eggs, butter, coffee, etc. are bad, then good, then bad, then good again. (I’m very happy eggs, butter, and red wine are currently “good” for us.)

Most reasonable people agree that no system of caring for children at risk is perfect. A child should be raised by two loving parents whenever possible. Unfortunately, we live in a VERY broken world, and way too many children wind up in horrific circumstances, needing care either short-term or long-term. To rule out ANY healthy option to care for a hurting child is a mistake. This is where “one size fits all” doesn’t work.

I once had a leader from a large, respected mega church inform me that their official church policy is to never work with or support orphanages. Their reasoning being that orphanages are terrible, that the ONLY good option for a child is adoption. They are not alone in their beliefs, the current prevailing opinion is that it’s better to move away from the orphanage system. I and many others do not agree. For some children, an orphanage is the best option.

For the right child, adoption should always be the first option if no healthy, loving family is in the picture. But many times, there are situations that make adoption difficult or impossible. If there are multiple siblings, very few couples are willing to take on three, or four, or more children. If the child has extreme special needs, the pool of adoptive parents is pretty small. If a parent or parents are still somewhere, but due to prison, substance abuse, or other reasons are out of the picture “temporarily,” the children are left in limbo. The reality of adoptions is that once a child hits about five years old the odds of adoption drop dramatically. The fact that international adoptions have reached a record low doesn’t help the situation. When you factor all these problems in, very few children in need of care can ever be adopted. The most recent statistics say that worldwide, a child in a care situation has a 2% chance of being adopted. Too many people work for years and spend thousands of dollars trying to adopt only to be denied or to have serious problems handling the child placed in their care. When adoption works, it’s fantastic, but it’s a long road and doesn’t always end well.

So, if there is no healthy family, and adoption is not an option, you are left with foster care or orphanages. There are a lot of great people working in the foster care system that truly have a heart for the children they are serving. Unfortunately, there are also many people involved for the wrong reasons, and everyone is working in a system that has many profound challenges. Too often, children are moved around more than they should be, creating a very difficult, unstable life. How would you react if you had to change homes, friends, schools, churches, etc. every six months or so? With the system the way it is in the US, although it was set up with the best of intentions, the statistics do not play out well. I’ve had many people involved in foster care vent to me about the lack of stability and the crushing bureaucracy involved. Foster care does not work well for most children. Every system is complicated.

Most people agree the orphanage system is broken, but, when done correctly, orphanages and group homes can be the best option. Just like foster care, there are some great people working in the orphanage systems worldwide, and some not so great. There are definitely orphanages that are horrible and should be shut down. There are also orphanages that are healthy, stable, and give the children a loving home with a great future. A well-run orphanage can provide a child or sibling group the stability, professional counseling, and love they need to heal and grow into healthy adults. We need a last resort when adoption or family care is not an option.

Everyone has a strong opinion. Everyone seems to have an agenda. About the only thing everyone agrees on is no system of caring for children at risk is perfect. We, as a society, have the right tools to help these children, but we need to use every tool in the box. We need to find the right size for each child. One size does not fit all.

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