The best scenario for the child is to be in a home in which there is a mother and a father who love and care for the child to the best of their abilities and do not abuse or neglect them. This category is Adoption and Foster Care. These are both very effective in caring for the children, if the adults are given the proper education and are, of course, carefully screened. This is not always the case. There are countries, including our own, where the educational system does not adequately prepare adults as to what to expect from a child who was living in the streets, in an institution or moved from home to home from a very young age.
The foster care system has a lot of holes in it as well. It is designed, of course, to be a temporary home for the child until someone adopts them permanently. Unfortunately, as the child ages, foster parents often return them back to the system, and off they go to a new foster home. This process is sometimes repeated over and over again. Each time it occurs, the child again feels abandoned and rejected and emotional scarring occurs. These children become more and more detached as time goes on and are less and less likely to end up being permanently adopted. As adults, they have little chance of bonding with others or being a positive contributing member of their society. Their path will most likely be a criminal one…if they survive.
Most adoptive parents are looking for young children (0 – 3 years). There are pros and cons to this for the orphan children of the world. The pro is that it means that young children will be in homes before the abandonment and lack of proper parental care has a chance to cause any serious long term damage to the child. The con is that it means many tens of millions of older children are left without the hope of having a home with parents.
The reality of the larger picture is that the effectiveness of the adoption and foster programs is greatly overshadowed by the inefficiency of it in relation to the scope of the orphan problem.
Over 150 million orphans are (out there) in the world and sadly, there will never be more than a tiny fraction of those children adopted or in foster care systems. Even if there is continuing growth in foster care in developing nations, it will never keep up with the growth of the orphan population. The flaws in our own system will be greatly magnified in other countries where the social infrastructure in charge of monitoring orphans and moving the children on to permanent adoptive homes do not have the funding or experience to properly manage a system that the United States has struggled with for many decades. These countries are billions of dollars and generations away from approaching our level of competency in that arena.
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