Go to the mobile version of this Web site.

Login | Contact Us | Site Map | Paid archives | Electronic edition | Subscription Questions | Extras

PUNCEC: Maybe it's time to bring back orphanages

By Harry Puncec, Special to the Rocky

Published September 8, 2008 at 9:11 a.m.

Text size  

More Speakout

More stories »

In the 1800s, orphanages weren’t pleasant places to live. But for the parentless child they were something — food and shelter if not a loving nuclear family. It was an answer for when life for adults or children was much briefer than today. Then along came Charles Dickens with his Oliver Twist, and the public began to wonder what they were really like.

Institutionalizing children in what must surely be heartless warehouses became suspect.

By the mid-1900s an alternative system, foster care, emerged as the answer.

Children would be raised in a family setting while large and expensive facilities would no longer have to be maintained. Foster care triumphed and places like Denver’s St. Vincent Orphanage for Boys changed its mission and name. But foster care is flawed and now the solution has become a problem in itself.

In a recent Speakout column by Dennis Kennedy (“5 ways to help better protect our kids,” Aug. 15) the flaws in our current foster care system were tellingly exposed while suggestions were made on how to fix it so other children wouldn’t die under the state’s care. The changes suggested might improve the system, but they can hardly be expected to turn a disaster back into a solution. Children will continue to die under conditions that break the heart of a nation that cares for its children.

I submit that it is time to bring back the orphanage.

Foster care was promoted for many reasons, including the genuine desire to place children in healthy and positive environs, but the reason it became the method of choice for the handling of orphaned children was simply cost.

It costs far less to disburse children in homes than in 24/7 public facilities. It’s been a bad bargain.Kennedy’s statistic of 14 dead children in a single year under the present system confirms that.

Social Services, a large organization with a professional staff, can’t hope to assure quality care in thousands of dispersed foster homes once the doors have been closed and windows shut. Hunger for Oliver Twist was replaced by starvation for Chandler Grafner.

But isn’t an orphanage a dark and horrible place? Not to my knowledge.

Twice, for more than two months each time, my brothers and I were sent to St. Vincent’s back around 1950, so I can speak with some experience. Memories from there are not unpleasant. There was discipline for sure, assigned jobs to do and constant supervision, but there was also companionship of boys in the same rough circumstances.

We initially felt sorry for ourselves because our mother couldn’t care for us. But then we met a boy there whose father had murdered his mother and went to the electric chair for it. He was our friend. We had to work in the laundry every Saturday washing our clothing and bedding, but then we had clean clothes and slept in fresh beds.

In the evening we’d be in bed in our large dorm room with the lights turned off and a radio on a table in the middle of the room playing the Lux Theater of the Air or some adventure show, and we’d close our eyes to imagine ourselves out there somewhere doing great things, just like the people on the radio.

It would cost us money to care for discarded children in such a place again, but know that not a one of us suffered or died while within those walls so long ago.

Harry Puncec is a resident of Lakewood.

Comments

  • September 8, 2008

    9:23 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    gary writes:

    Good post...

    You are correct.

    Also, maybe it is time for parents to adopt...American babies instead of going all over the world to adopt and bring them back to America.

    We have enough children here for them to adopt.

    Nuff Said!

  • September 8, 2008

    3:49 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    BestView writes:

    Bringing back Orphanages is not the answer to halting the abuse of children in the states' foster care system. Bringing in more quality foster parents who care for the well-being of children while in their care is the answer and increasing social workers' ability to visit those families more often, will insure the safety and well-being of children in foster care.

    Children need to grow up in a family setting, to experience what it means to be part of a family. When these children grow up to parent their own, it is their experiences in a family that will dictate how they care for their own children. You only need to look at the outcomes of kids who grow up group homes to know what kind of future we will have with children in foster care growing up in orphanages.

    In California, which has 20% of the nation's foster care population, there are more foster families adopting the children in their care than any other type of adoption (international, custodial, kin or spousal adoption). And with additional incentives implemented by the State, the expectation that families will adopt their children in foster care will increase.

    Those who have dedicated their lives to helping children in foster care know what it takes to keep kids safe and secure
    1) more quality families so that social workers have a choice in placing children in the best possible family for that child and
    2) increasing the support to social workers who can visit the families more often, making sure that children's needs are provided for and the families are supported appropriately.

    Everyone who cares for children's future has something to offer children in foster care. Become a foster parent, yourself. Get more involved in the foster care system locally. Learn what the issues are and tell you friends and family, co-workers and business associates of those needs. Collect donations for youth. A CA statewide mattress retailer, Sleep Train, is taking donations for foster youth of new shoes, new clothes, school supplies, winter coats and holiday gifts, all to be distributed through 20 foster care agencies. Every bit helps! But kids need families to help them grow into productive adults. It's not just about a house and a bed to sleep in, it's about a family that loves and supports children - no matter how they came into this world.

  • September 8, 2008

    4:40 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    LindaRosaRN writes:

    Orphanages are a very good idea. They would be more accountable and transparent than the present system. This is especially important in Colorado where we may lead the country in abusive fad parenting methods. Some examples are:

    1) Love and Logic, an uninvolved type of parenting, with repeated snide one-liner responses to children, that may lead young children especially to feel abandoned.

    2) Baby whipping. Starting at age 5 months, children are beaten with a nylon baton. Proponents claim this is justified by Old Testament teachings.

    3) Attachment Therapy Parenting (aka Evergreen Method). This is an insanely brutal treatment employs isolation, deprivation, nutritional abuse, excessive exercise/chores, bare bedrooms with alarms, threats of abandonment, and humiliation. Even a child's good behavior is interpreted as sneaky and manipulative, thereby escalating distrust between child and caregiver.

    We should guard against vulnerable children coming into contact with parenting methods such as these, or beliefs that children need harsh treatment. Orphanages is a better way to guard against this.

  • September 12, 2008

    7:38 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    annie143 writes:

    Orphanages may not be the complete answer but they sure would go a long way, I think, in saving the most exploited children. Strict and eternal vigilance should be placed on the caregivers and workers in such settings.

    Bestview and others, your words of solution and advice sound so sane in an insane world. And, the best advice is GET INVOLVED !
    make your voices heard to your lawmakers and others and then hold the workers feet to the fire when mistakes are made and not try and sweep it under the rug.