EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Institutional care is harmful to children.
Decades of research prove that growing up in institutions has detrimental psychological, emotional and physical implications including attachment disorders, cognitive and developmental delays, and a lack of social and life skills leading to multiple disadvantages during adulthood.
A catalogue of child rights violations has been documented within, and as a result of, institutional care. A 2006 UN study found that children in institutions are particularly at risk of violence compared to children in other settings, including verbal abuse, beatings, excessive or prolonged restraint, rape, sexual assault and harassment.
Institutional care is not necessary.
Contrary to popular belief, the majority of children in orphanages are not orphans, but have either one or both parents alive. Virtually all have extended family. Even when children are without parental care and alternative care is needed, it should be provided with kinship or foster families or in a family-like setting in the community, as recommended by the UN Guidelines on Alternative Care.
Institutional care is deeply unjust.
As a system, it attracts children coming from situations of poverty or from families with a history of institutionalisation, marginalisation and discrimination. Children with disabilities and children belonging to ethnic minorities are over represented in institutional care and the system sets them up for a life of vulnerability and abuse.
Institutional care is intrinsically connected with the poverty of families and communities and the inadequate provision of services. Poverty is the most common underlying risk factor leading to children being separated from parents. Institutional care leavers suffer multiple disadvantages in adult life including reduced economic opportunities, social exclusion, increased tendency to substance abuse, mental health problems, high suicide rates, exposure to criminal activities and exploitation.
Almost all countries in the world ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), whose preamble is clear in recognising that children should grow up in a family environment. Furthermore the United Nations General Assembly endorsed the Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children in 2009, which set the overall objective to phase out institutions as a care option.
Eliminating institutional care is necessary and possible.
A number of governments across the world have already started to reform out-dated child protection systems relying on institutional care, re-integrating children into families and communities, developing family strengthening and family alternative care. Yet, with millions of children still warehoused in institutions, and several million more at risk, we face a truly global problem.
While protecting, respecting and fulfilling children’s rights is primarily a responsibility of the State, coordination among a number of actors is critical to achieve a global breakthrough. Hope and Homes for Children calls on all the stakeholders that play a role in developing, running, supporting or influencing national care systems to join forces in a collaborative action to eradicate institutional care once and for all.
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