Orphanages Foster Stability, Former Judge Says

Retired Philadelphia Judge Lois G. Forer, continuing her plea to “bring back the orphanage,” Wednesday challenged Orange County professionals who work with abused and abandoned children to rethink the way they view long-term child care.

“We are failing our children,” she said. “We are abandoning millions of the next generation. We are permitting hundreds of children to die preventable deaths as a result of abuse and neglect.”

Forer said adoption and foster parenting have failed as means of caring for and providing stable environments for abandoned children.

“We’ve all heard President Bush talk about the joys of adoption,” she said. “But where are we going to find the adoptive parents to take the kids?”

Forer made her comments at the 24th annual meeting of the Florence Crittendon Services of Orange County at the Radisson Hotel in Irvine. The Crittendon program, based in Fullerton, provides residential care for troubled adolescent girls and abused and neglected infants.

Marilyn Salzman, Crittendon office manager, agreed with Forer’s assessment, noting that problems often arise when abused children are taken from their parents but eventually reunited.

“We need to make long-term placement situations available so they are not being bumped back and forth,” Salzman said.

Salzman said that of the 165 adolescent girls helped by her agency last year, the average number of previous stays in group homes was four. Six of the girls had been put in 20 homes before arriving at Crittendon, she said.

“These are kids between 12 and 18 years of age. That’s really serious,” Salzman said.

But William Steiner, executive director of Orangewood Children’s Foundation, disagrees.

“The thought of going back to the orphanage for me is unacceptable,” he said. “There are institutions today that are very abusive and have poorly trained and poorly paid staffs.”

Steiner reminded the audience of abuses involving orphans years ago--in some cases children were actually sold to families who put them to work--and noted that other methods such as foster parenting are more suited to the needs of today’s children. Steiner is a foster parent to a 22-month-old drug-addicted baby.

Steiner said his experience as a fund-raiser for Orangewood Children’s Home tells him that it would be impossible to raise enough money to support a well-run system of orphanages.

Forer gained national attention for an article she wrote in 1988 entitled “Bring Back the Orphanage.” In that piece, she said that during her time on the Court of Common Pleas bench in Philadelphia she saw thousands of abused and neglected children in need of “safe and permanent homes” who were eventually reunited with abusive parents.

“Again and again, I saw children placed in a series of inadequate foster homes because there was no place else for them,” she said.

Orphanages or “group homes,” she said, would provide these children with a stable environment and save them from being shuttled among foster homes.