NCJ Number
129834
Journal
Governing the States and Localities Volume: 4 Issue: 8 Dated: (May 1991) Pages: 30-35
Date Published
1991
Length
6 pages
Annotation
In many States, a new form of the orphanage is helping meet children's needs not met by family preservation services and the foster care system.
Abstract
Orphanages have been a taboo subject under State and national policies that have emphasized services to preserve the family and foster care as a short-term placement until children can be returned to their parents. Joyce Ladner, a professor of sociology at Howard University in Washington, D.C., argues, however, that the current system of family preservation and foster care was designed for another time and place where a kinship network of care was in place and when drugs, homelessness, crime, and unemployment were not destroying neighborhoods and families. The current dynamics of social disintegration affecting many families is leaving many children with the need for long-term care. The problem is compounded by the fact that more abused and neglected children are coming into the foster-care system than it can handle, and the number of foster families available to provide shelter for children is dwindling. The Villages is helping to address this problem by providing long-term care in a home-like environment using surrogate parents for as many as 10 children. The surrogate parents are paid professionals, and the houses are owned and administered by the Villages, a nonprofit social service agency. Such a structure of child care provides a needed option in a basic repertoire of child protection services.