Warning: it is dry - being loaded with appropriate statistics.
However, it does show some promise for community (not government) response to local increases in local orphan needs. And it does take some of the blanket negative out of orphanage care.
I'm a bit disturbed by the statement that 55% of the community located "orphans" were being cared for by a biological parent. To me, that skews the results dramatically. There is a world of difference between being raised in an institutional setting (no familial caregivers) and being raised in, essentially, a single-parent home. it sounds like over half of the community-living sampled children were not actually orphans at all!
ReplyDeleteI would be far more interested in the results of a study with truly comparable sample groups - in which all the children were living with caregivers other than biological parents. To compare an institutionalized child with a child in a single-parent home is apples and oranges, really.
The study is not without its weaknesses. But it demonstrates a significant departure from not only how orphanages come to be, how they are staffed and run, and that outcomes can be better than the atrocious picture we often carry based on government run institutions. The "organic" (study's word) nature of these orphanages offers a different approach. It certainly does not address the effects on the childrens' inner world, their ability to maintain stable relationships into adulthood, etc.
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