As academic studies continue to reveal the harmful impact of orphanages on children, a movement called The Homecoming Project is encouraging religious organisations to reconsider how they support the most vulnerable.
In the UK, the Christian church is rightly praised for its generosity and compassion towards young people, both at home and overseas. Each year, the UK Church gives around £500 million to support orphanages around the world, and one in five Christians in the UK has visited or volunteered in an orphanage abroad.
But there’s now a growing awareness – backed up by a series of scientific studies – that orphanages are not the best way to help vulnerable children. People and governments all over the world now accept it is far better for a child to grow up in a family environment whenever possible.
Incredibly, more than 80% of the 5.4 million children currently living in orphanages have a parent or relative who could be looking after them if they had the right support.
The Homecoming Project has been established to make that support possible, and to ensure that the Church’s generosity is having the maximum positive impact for the children and young people it’s intended to help.
“Evidence shows that children thrive best in safe, loving families—not in institutions. The Homecoming Project seeks to inspire a transformative shift within the Christian community – moving away from the traditional approach of placing children in orphanages, to embracing family-centred care models.”
– Tony Lowry, Homecoming Project Lead
The harm caused by orphanages
Studies have shown that growing up in an orphanage damages a child’s psychological, emotional, physical and social development.
Having a constant, loving caregiver in their formative years enables children to learn how to form healthy, positive attachments. No matter how well run they are, orphanages are incapable of providing a child with the consistent love and care they need to be happy and thrive.
Indeed, many orphanages are run solely as businesses, where children are seen as little more than ‘stock’ – and are treated as such.
Children being raised in orphanages are far more likely to be the victims of abuse and exploitation, and even their physical development can be harmed, with one study suggesting that children are delayed by one month of physical growth for every three months spent in an orphanage.
And while foreigners who visit or volunteer at orphanages mean well, the emotional harm that occurs when they leave – and the bonds a child has built with them are suddenly broken – results in children being unable or unwilling to form emotional attachments with anyone as they grow up.
“The challenge for us Christians is to ask questions about where our funding goes, and whether the orphans we think we are supporting actually have a family they could be with.”
– Pete Garratt, Director of Global Programmes, Hope and Homes for Children
A business, nothing more
There are a startlingly high number of children with families who are currently living in orphanages – over 4 million around the world.
In large part this is for a simple reason: in lots of countries, owning an orphanage is a lucrative business. Orphanages attract funding from state bodies, and can bring in huge amounts of income from kind donors overseas – so if the owners can’t find genuine orphans to fill their rooms, they’ll find other children who can.
In some countries, orphanage owners literally send recruiters out to remote villages to persuade – and sometimes even coerce – parents to hand over their family members.
Often, parents get persuaded that giving their child up to an orphanage is the only hope they have of getting them a better education, the resources they’re lacking, or a better chance in life.
Desperate, well-meaning parents get convinced by these earnest promises – but of course, once the child is in the orphanage, those promises are quickly broken.
Instead the children are frequently treated as economic units, getting the minimum of care in order that the orphanage owners might extract the maximum possible profit.
Funding family-based care, and care reform
It has become increasingly clear that to break up the orphanage business model, the focus needs to be on providing families with the resources they need, so that they don’t have to make the heartbreaking decision to send their child to an institution.
And in the minority of situations where it isn’t safe for a child to be raised with their family, providing them with a foster family who can allow them to grow up in a nurturing, loving environment is far more beneficial than sending them to an orphanage.
It’s for that reason that The Homecoming Project is encouraging more members of the Church to transition their donations away from supporting orphanages and other residential institutions, and instead fund family-based care projects.
“This shift must be handled with great care. Simply redirecting funding without proper planning could increase the risks faced by children currently growing up in institutions. Our goal is to honour the incredible generosity of the UK Church while encouraging a new focus: supporting children to grow up in families where they can truly thrive.”
– Tony Lowry, Homecoming Project Lead
Time for change
There’s already an appetite within the Church to move away from funding orphanages and harmful institutions – 27% of regular churchgoers in the UK have not donated to orphanages and stated that they would not in the future.
But at present the UK Church is still disproportionately supporting orphanages and institutionally-based care for children around the world, compared to the overall British population.
And although the body of research surrounding the benefits of family care for children over institutional care has evolved and grown, education within the UK Church itself has lagged behind.
It’s undeniable that the UK Church is highly motivated to support vulnerable children around the world. But at present, a significant amount of its goodwill and good intentions are being directed towards supporting institutional settings for children which do not and cannot provide the highest quality care.
The Homecoming Project aims to help the Church ensure that its generous funding for children is being used in a way that supports the best child care models, and allows the Church to play a key role in the movement to give all children the love, care and family upbringing they deserve.
“It’s time to take a lead in challenging one of the great injustices of our times and it’s time to change a system that sees orphanages generate large flows of funding while efforts to keep those children in family or to reunite them back into safe and loving families receive very little.”
– Pete Garratt, Director of Global Programmes, Hope and Homes for Children
