Give all children a loving home

FAMILY FIRST: Teens in orphanages are often not successful at being adopted and have to ‘age out’ in institutions, which could be detrimental to their wellbeing. Experts advocate deinstitutionalisation and replacing this with family or family-based care, Suzanna Pillay writes

ADOPTING older children is something many prospective adoptive parents shy away from, preferring instead to adopt younger children and babies.

Lari Baty Canon, a mental health counsellor and adoption and foster care specialist, said the issue with older children who had been institutionalised was that they did not know how to behave in a typical way in a family, society or a school environment.

“As a result, their behaviour often seems strange or odd to their adoptive family. But, once families are adequately trained and prepared for this, they can understand why their child is acting this way. They were never exposed to proper manners, or to the proper way of doing things. Understanding why and what institutionalisation does to a child makes it easier to learn how to handle their behaviour.”

She said a lot of adoptive families were ill-equipped, improperly trained or did not have the right temperament for it.

“They get very discouraged and want to return the children before the children have the opportunity to heal,” she added.

Baty Canon was a guest speaker at the Malaysia Adoption Day 2016, organised by OrphanCare Foundation with the support of the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry.

She said the adoption of older children had to be advocated strongly because most families don’t want a child in their mid to late teens.

“These children remain institutionalised before they eventually “age out” (reach the age of 18) and go into society with very little preparation or training to cope with life.

“They do not have a family or know how to have intimate, connected emotional relationships, or even a place to call home.

“There are some small non-governmental organisations (NGOs ) that run transition programmes for these children, but they are not enough.

“By placing them in an institution versus the nurturing environment that a home and loving parents can provide, they are marginalised, pulled away from the community and out of the social system. There are too many kids in this situation. With decentralisation, we put the children in family care and back in the community.”

Baty Canon could not talk about specific numbers because the national study had been done yet. But, government estimates said 13,700 children were institutionalised in Malaysia.

According to Lumos: Ending Institutionalisation of Children in Malaysia, 87 per cent have one living parent; 35 per cent have both parents; and 86 per cent have contact with their families, but only four per cent return to live with them.

“Research has shown that children left to grow in orphanages, deprived of loving parental care, suffer life-long physical and psychological harm.

“Children from institutions suffer from poor health, physical underdevelopment and deterioration in brain growth. Orphanages should be the last resort for children and orphans. Children should not be isolated from the broader community. This is an outdated concept and is better replaced with family or family-based care.”

She said institutionalised children might face psychological issues arising from abandonment and sometimes abuse and neglect.

“The challenges for parents include acquiring the right tools to parent adopted children. They may not know how to disclose the adoption, deal with identity questions or behaviour issues.”

The public also needs to be exposed to more positive adoption scenarios, so that they can come together to support the families in their midst.

“Adoptive parents need to be adoption educators and be advocates for their children to educate teachers and community members about their situation. They can achieve this much better if we teach them how to talk to their child’s school teacher.”

Trustee-head of Media, Publicity and Fundraising, OrphanCare Foundation Noraini Hashim said once children in institutions reached the age of 14 to 18, they had very little chance of being adopted.

“There was one teenager who was returned at 15. Several children have been taken out and returned three times by different families.

“Everybody only wants cute babies but what they fail to understand is that usually these older children will come with a lot of baggage. They are usually very naughty and have very real discipline problems.

“But the right training and care will help them transform, which is why a parenting course is very important for parents to learn how to deal with these children.