Taiwan has thousands of orphans and abandoned children living in
homes across the nation, some in relative comfort, others in deplorable
conditions. A lack of coordination between public and private assistance
leaves a lot undone
Nowhere to call home
One morning, some two years ago, a special package was left on the
doorstep of St. Anne's Children's Home in Tienmu. It was a baby. He was
wrapped in a blanket, placed in a basket and was found snuggling a red
envelope filled with NT$100,000.
“We have children left on our doorstep quite a lot,” said Sister Petronelli Keulers, who has worked at the home for the past 31 years,
“but they are never so rich.”
While the child's background would prove to be unique, his present
situation is the same as that of thousands of children living cheek by
jowl in the nation's homes for orphans and abandoned children. Just how
many children is hard say. It's even difficult to give a precise number
of how many homes are dedicated to caring for them. The fact that they have slipped through the seams in the social
fabric precludes their numbers from being counted. And the fact that
they are children prevents their voices from being heard. These two variables combine to create a seemingly insolvable
equation: How can society systematically care for its neediest when
their need is due to the fact that they are no longer a part of the
system?
Many children are needy
While the baby left on St. Anne's doorstep came with an endowment
bundled in its blanket, others don't have even a blanket. Keulers
estimates that of the 47 children living at the home, one third were
left on the doorstep by parents who were unable to care for them. Either
the parents were too poor, addicted to drugs, unmarried and wary of
social stigmas, or had given birth to a child they felt unable — or
were unwilling — to raise.
Nearly half of the children at St. Anne's are physically or mentally
disabled, according to Keulers. “Some people are ashamed to have had
this kind of child,” she said.
Few of the children in the nation's orphanages are actually orphans.
In each of the five children's homes the Taipei Times visited for this
report, administrators said some 80 percent of the children in their
care had been abandoned. In the regional homes operated under the
Ministry of the Interior (MOI), children under 12 are admitted when
their family fits any one of five criteria: if their parents have passed
away; if they've been taken into custody under the Child and Youth
Welfare Law, which protects children against abuse, neglect and
vagrancy; if the head of the family suffers a debilitating physical or
psychological problem or is in prison; if the family's income is too low
to support raising a child; or in the event of an emergency.
The MOI's Central Region Children's Home, in Taichung
City, houses 180 youngsters from six counties as far north as Miaoli, to
Chiayi in the south. The children there live in relative comfort
compared with homes that aren't government-supported. “Families” of 11
to 16 kids share 100-ping living quarters in a building that resembles a
high school campus. Each has a classroom, two large bedrooms to separate
boys and girls, a dining area, a TV room and a bedroom for the social
workers that live with the family. Each family has two social workers
that stay alternate nights at the home. The youngest group, the
newborns, has more social workers.
Touring the home, its director, Ma Chung-hsi, spoke with quiet
confidence of his staff's ability to maintain normal development for the
children in their care and reduce their social problems. The facility is
well-kept, clean and organized. Trained counselors help the kids with
anything from their math homework to their feelings of neglect. Young
men performing their alternative military service help out around
campus. Buses are available to shuttle groups around town. Middle and
high school-aged kids are given up to NT$900 each month for pocket
money.
"We do our best to make this place as close to a real home
environment as is possible," Ma said.
His confidence is buoyed by cash. For each child it houses, the
Central Children's Home receives NT$30,000 from the government each
month to pay for their housing, meals, education, clothes and
incidentals. It's an amount of money that makes Lee Hua-shu (???), flush
with envy.
And others are needier
Lee is the director of the Taichung Christian Herald Children's Home
cross town from the Central Children's Home. It's a privately
run institution and stands in stark contrast to the MOI's facility.
Though it houses only 63 children, it is overrun. There are no
“families,” but a dozen or more boys stacked in bunk beds in a dormitory
with cement floors. They're all overseen by a single social worker with
a weary smile. The girls live in a similar dormitory next door, the
youngest children in yet another. A rusted playground sits silently in
the distance.
The buildings on campus, each a half-century old, are showing their
age. Termites have ravaged the woodwork and a cold draft floats through
the walls. Two buildings that could house children leak when it rains
and so sit abandoned.
None of this is a reflection on Lee, who is making certain that
Christian Herald's meager resources are enough to see its five dozen
children into adulthood. “Most of what we get comes from the local
community,” she said. “That's the way it's always been.”
The gifts range from toys and clothes to food, such as the chickens
penned up behind the dining hall. Money comes from various outreach
programs, like World Vision International and other Christian
organizations. A bit comes from the government, too. Twenty-seven of the
children at Christian Herald were sent there by Taichung's Social
Services Bureau. But unlike the NT$30,000 that accompanies each child
sent to an MOI facility, the 27 kids authorities have sent to Christian
Herald receive only NT$9,000 per month. The remaining 36 live
hand-to-mouth off community goodwill.
One wonders if the children living at Christian Herald have seen how
the other half lives and whether they had a say in where they were sent.
They didn't, of course.
Director of Taichung City's Social Services Bureau Chung Chie-sui explained that of the children brought to his bureau, most are
sent to one of five children's homes in Taichung, three of which are
government subsidized — either fully, as is the Central Children's
Home, or partially, like Christian Herald — and two are privately
operated.
“Most of the children were abandoned,” Chung said.
“But they were left at one home or another. No one has ever left a child
on our doorstep.” He explained that most kids end up living in the home at which they
were left. Keulers echoed this, saying St. Anne's was given custody of
each of the babies left on her doorstep in the past three decades.
A lack of solutions
The contrast between the living conditions at public and private
homes brings into focus the deficits in Taiwan's child-welfare system. Asked how the central government might improve conditions at
privately-run homes, one official at the MOI's Children's Bureau
who asked not to be named, seemed perplexed by the question.
“The government already helps private institutions as
best it can. Those institutions are supported through charitable
organizations,” the official said, implying that it was not the
government's problem to address.
Yet a quick accounting of the work done by major charities in Taiwan
suggests that they could use a lot more help than they get. World Vision
International claims to offer support to some 8,000 children in central
Taiwan alone and another 22,000 in the rest of Taiwan, but doesn't
differentiate between orphans, abandoned babies and other needy
children.
“With that many children, it's impossible for us to
operate on a case-by-case basis,” said one World Vision worker.
An equally pressing problem — and one that is surely harder to solve
— is social attitudes toward orphans and abandoned children. Chung of Taichung's Social Services Bureau claimed that as many as 5
percent of orphans are adopted or placed in foster care — the best of
all solutions — but that abandoned children with disabilities rarely
benefit from adoption.
Keulers also recalled several children living at St. Anne's who were
adopted by families in Holland decades ago, but they too were all
healthy. “These [disabled] children, they can't be adopted,” she said.
“Besides the pain of raising such a child, in Taiwan there is also
shame.”
After the baby with NT$100,000 was left on their doorstep, the social
workers at St. Anne's were able to find its grandmother, who identified
the baby's father, who is a doctor, and the mother, who is a nurse. After discovering their baby had Down's syndrome, they abandoned it
and moved to the US to restart their careers. The grandmother also
refused to take the child. “If this is how educated people react,
imagine how others do,” Keulers said. “If a family won't love its own
child, you can't expect the government would either.”
By David Momphard
26 November 2003
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2003/11/23/2003077005
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