Orphanage In The City

Orphanage In The City

By: Josh Rucinski

Pediatrics and child psychiatry debate what kind of environment serves orphans the best, is it the foster home or the orphanage. Prevailing opinion is that the foster home has won hands down since the 1960s, but of course the situation is more complex then common knowledge allows or the media is comfortable in encapsulating in a thirty second sound bite.

Media portrayal: Aren’t orphans abused?

There is public mistrust of the foster home system in the United States. Abuse that occurs is tragic, yet evidence points to smaller than average rates of abuse than in the general population. Media appeals to the senses, and is prone to be sensationalistic. Stories lack contextual depth and is not meant for active participation or discussion, yet their influence damages perception. Foster homes across the United States are created by people who volunteer to raise children which are not their own. It stands to reason and appeals to our better nature that these volunteers are well suited to the task at hand.

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Foster care is in the United States a quality endeavor. Foster care does lack resources to care for orphans in every situation. Statistically one of every ten orphans within care other than a relative were living in institutional settings in 2001. These children are the ones whom behavioral disorders have precluded them from adoption. One of the more common disorders is Attention Deficient Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). In the case of an orphan, the behavior often manifests into becoming troubled and becoming un-adoptable.

Media portrayal: Orphanages are obsolete.

Correction, the term ‘orphanage’ is political incorrect. The word is so inflammatory that even the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services acknowledges the existence of orphanages in only the most backhanded kind of way. “While there are still some orphanages in the United States today, child welfare systems are less likely to use orphanages as placements for children and youth in foster care.”

This is true, 9 of 10 orphans are placed in foster care, but 1 in 10 are placed in a school, a parsonage, family center, or group home. Make no mistake, these are modern terms for orphanages. A Return to Orphanages authors argue that public distaste of orphanages is merely semantic. People have been programmed by popular fiction, newspapers and books to associate orphanages with brutal relics of the past. Perhaps they were necessary after the alarming loss of parents during the civil war, but were since replaced by modern foster care systems. The error is generalization. Not all orphans in the past were cared for by institutions. Nor is it true that all orphans in the present are cared for by foster homes.

The orphanage is still used, simply replaced by a term that finds greater acceptance and less gravitas in the public mind. It is the rationale of political correctness, but it has created a confusing environment. It is academic whether or not there is a cynicism present with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that encourages confusing terms. The term orphanage is the succinct term and will be used throughout the project, simply because people can use the term without internal discourse of its meaning.

The project uses behavioral science as a mechanism to key architectural program solutions. The goal is to focus success in getting ADHD orphans whom are resistant to foster care ready for a positive next step in life. The architectural program recognizes there are children whose behavior precludes foster care. The architectural program recognizes that one project solution cannot address all behavioral problems. The architectural program focuses on a prevalent behavior in children that can be cared for in an institutional setting, within the orphanage by means of architectural space, light, and communication.