Platform : Do Orphanages Have a Role to Play in Welfare Reform?

Welfare reform proposals being circulated by the new Republican majority in Washington include such ideas as limiting Aid to Families With Dependent Children to two years, and if mothers can’t make a living after that, even putting their children in foster homes or institutions. Would this be a humane or cost-effective answer to the welfare dilemma? We sought the opinions of the administrators of some of Southern California’s largest youth-care facilities (many of which were founded as orphanages decades ago), foster parents and mothers receiving AFDC payments.

HOWARD NARIMAN

Executive director, Optimist Youth Homes, Los Angeles

The concept of orphanages has been floated in the community quite a bit. They think it may be the cheapest way to take care of kids. But it costs less money to take care of them in a welfare system. Orphanages are much more expensive. Even if you have a minimum staff, you still have wage and hour laws. And the whole notion of orphanage needs to be defined. Are they talking about a Dickensian orphanage? I don’t think our society will be very much interested in accepting the warehouse concept again. We’ve come too far.

When children grow up (in institutions), many have a very difficult time establishing relationships with people. They may not develop the kind of family structure we would like them to provide for their own children. They’re not really good parent models.

Institutional care can serve a useful purpose if you have kids with special problems--drugs, gangs, child abuse--that need to be here for a short period of time to overcome their difficulties. Those kinds of youngsters really cannot fit in with regular foster home placement. They need professional assistance. So we work with them, set a goal and when those goals are met return them to a less institutional setting--a smaller, more personal group home or the family if the family is workable.

SHERRI SMITH

Mother of three, AFDC recipient, San Pedro

Putting kids in orphanages because their parents are poor is ludicrous. Instead of taking their children away to get women off welfare, they need to provide them with child care to go to school and get an education. The single biggest issue we have right now is child care. Instead of helping women find jobs and helping them with child care they want to just take (their children) away? The whole structure of American family values isn’t how much money you make, it’s whether you have a family who’s taking care of their children so they can become productive adults one day.

I want everybody to know that welfare mothers are stereotyped as women who are druggies or alcoholics or who want to stay home with their kids all the time. Yes, most of us would like to see our kids, but the reality is that we can’t stay home. We can’t even live month to month on what they send us. I want people to understand that for most of us this is not a staying place; this is a resting place. A place where we can try and get our lives back together for whatever reasons we’ve ended up in this situation.

GERRY ZASLAW

Chief executive, Vista Del Mar Family Service, Los Angeles

It sounds to me like it’s being thought of as a punitive action in response to continued out-of-wedlock births by welfare mothers, which is totally inappropriate--punishing the child rather than dealing with the issue specifically.

On the other side, though, if we’re saying that some children may be better off in group care, which is what an orphanage is, that may not be a totally negative concept. It depends on what the purpose is. I have a hard time identifying where it would be appropriate for young children, say under the age of 12. I think we find there are some, although relatively few, adolescent youth who may be better off in a group setting because of their inability to function well with some of the emotional ties and intimacy demands they find within a family context. My concept of a modern orphanage would be a group setting, maybe up to 20 kids. It would not house 100 like they used to.

It’s a stretch, granted, but to me there was an aspect of the orphanage in military service. Many kids who are wandering about, without structure, 25 years ago would have gone into the service. A lot of them would have benefited from the routine, the structure and the training.

JANICE YOUNG

Foster parent, Altadena

As a foster parent, I think children need individual attention, one-on-one interaction. I think the best way to do that is to have a smaller environment where they get personal attention and where they can see examples in the household as to how they ought to operate when they get older.

I’ve been a foster parent now about a year. I have two babies and one little girl, age seven. That’s quite a bit because I am a working foster mother so our children see us go to work. We don’t just sit home. They seem to be progressing nicely. When they’re not in my care or in the care of my husband, they have an excellent licensed baby sitter.

JOHN M. HITCHCOCK

Executive director, Hillsides Home for Children, Pasadena

What is needed is to help (welfare) parents become more financially independent, not to punish them for their dependency. The oversimplified notion of removing kids just doesn’t address the complexity of the problem.

There is a hard-core group of single mothers who are on welfare for more than (the average stay of) two years. But when they actually looked at the group they discovered these are also women who are illiterate and need a lot of training to get to a point where they could hold down a job.

Child support is a major issue. Most of these children have fathers. What are we doing to get them to support their progeny? Affordable child care is essential. The fastest-growing poor population is children and we’re concerned that welfare reform will get translated into just increasing that population.

RICHARD EMBRY

Director, Family Resource Center, Five Acres, Altadena

There is a place for long-term, out-of-home care for some children, whether you call them orphanages, whether they’re in foster families, guardianships or group homes. Some parents, despite services, despite trying hard, do not get healthy enough to nourish and raise productive children. So we need some living arrangements, some social services, some support for those kids.

But to tie it to welfare reform and income maintenance--to assume that all families on welfare cannot raise their children--is wrong.

When you compare the cost of orphanages or out-of-home care for kids to welfare support for families, it’s a financial burden the country could not afford, quite frankly.