What is an institution?

An institution, or orphanage, can be defined as any residential facility with overall capacity for more than twelve children.

Institutions are part of a reactive childcare system, providing care for children from very different backgrounds, with very different needs. They replace parental care without supporting families, without preventing family crises, and without attempting to resolve the situations that result in the placement of a child in an institution.

Institutions represent a blanket approach to childcare. They are expensive, inadequate and centralised. Even the very best institutions are ill-equipped to cater for children's needs or to support the observance of their rights. They can never replace the one-to-one care needed by children for their development and the full expression of their potential.

Institutions are a reactive solution to a deeper problem and thus fail to address the real problems faced by children and families. Institutions represent the major reason for the irrevocable severing of family ties.

Institutions are wrong

There are two main reasons why these damaging childcare systems continue to exist:

1. Difficulty in providing timely and effective services at community and family level in order to prevent separation of children from their families.

2. Inadequate provision of family placements (placement in an extended family, local adoption, fostering) for children without parental care.

Institutions provide a safety net for social workers in this situation. Unfortunately, this is usually treated as a long-term option with children rarely moving on to a permanent, family-based placement. For the majority of children in institutions the next placement is represented by moving into another institution or by reaching the age limit for childcare.

We do not believe that any institutions are necessary. We do not seek to transform or remodel them. We do not seek to reduce the number of children who live within them.

Replacing institutions with a whole range of alternative services demands a different approach to childcare, a radically different attitude towards parents and carers and a proactive approach to the prevention of children's separation from their families.