Polish Orphans
Dom Dziecka – Children’s Homes
Every child should have someone who loves them…
There are 25000 children living in the state orphanages in Poland…
All these children have suffered emotional traumas of various kinds. They have need of extra support through therapy and coaching. The Polish orphanage system lacks the resources that would make the difference.
The Polish orphan system was initially aimed at war orphans. Over the decades since the Second World War the proportion of parentless orphans sank, until today when only about 4% of the children in the Polish Children’s Home system have lost both parents. The term “orphan” has changed to also include “social orphans.”
Social orphans are children who are wards of the state. They have at least one living parent, but are raised in institution like forms and not in a foster home. Their contact with their families is often sporadic and infrequent. When the parents do visit the orphanage the contact is not natural, and cannot meet the emotional and psychological needs of these disadvantaged children. It is like visiting an institution.
The children come from a variety of backgrounds. Some have been rejected or abandoned by their parents; others have been abused and mistreated by their parents, or neglected. Mostly they are from dysfunctional families. To be a natural (parentless) orphan is traumatic, but there can be closure. Their parents are not to blame for them being in an institution. With the social orphans the trauma can be far worse. Their parents are alive and do not care.
An alcoholic parent can go to therapy. A single parent, after a divorce, can struggle together with their child, to get the child back home, showing the child that s/he has worth. The child in the Children’s Home suffers daily, knowing the parent could get them out of their situation.
In the case of mental illness, the question is if it is not more cost effective for the state to treat the cause (the parents), with effective treatments, instead of institutionalizing the “problems” (the children). This is not criticism of Poland specifically, as other countries also have myopic economic principles. With elections every 4 years and budget fixation on the next year, investing in the future, 10 to 20 years from now, does not enter a politicians mind.
Polish orphans are over 90% social orphans. These are children removed from their parental home because of neglect, abuse, or poverty, and are placed in a state orphanage. These orphanages are called Dom Dziecka in Polish, which is Children’s Home in English.
Research over long-term has show that social skills and emotional stability are more important in adult life than top marks at school. These qualities cannot be taught cognitively in a classroom environment. They are learned intuitively through experience in a family environment.
Poverty is a different situation. If the home was warm and had a loving atmosphere, the child suffers being institutionalized, but can still have a warm relationship with the parents. Once again investing in the parents can save society future expenses.
The philosophy behind the Dom Dziecka is to simulate a family atmosphere. The children live in small groups with specific carers assigned to them. The carers and teachers do have the children’s best at heart, but there are factors that they have no control over, such as a lack of resources, which makes it difficult to reach their goal, that of preparing the child for an adjusted adult life.
These orphanages have to take children with behaviour problems. There is a turnover of both children and carers. The bonds that develop between parent and child and between siblings do not develop in the Dom Dziecka environment.
Quiet and balanced children, sharing rooms with not well socialized children from dysfunctional families, suffer an unpleasant peer pressure. While the staff try to put children together, who fit in well with each other, this is not always possible in practice.
The carers do have a stressful task dealing with those children with behaviour problems, and therefore the better-behaved children get less attention. All children need attention from significant adults in their lives. This leads to competition for attention, which is then expressed in an unhealthy way. The quiet children lose that vital adult contact. The carers have to distance themselves emotionally to some degree out of self-preservation, or they will become emotionally burned-out.
There are too many children per carer for individual attention. The carers cannot show favouritism towards any child as this would result in other children being nasty to the favourite as soon as the carer’s back is turned. So any child to adult bonding, which is so vital in a child’s development, is not possible in the institutionalised orphanage system
Although some of the children get psychological counseling, this happens too seldom and the psychologist’s office is a strange environment for the children. Since there are so many children in these homes with psychological and emotional scars, which require intense therapy, having a psychologist or a cognitive behavioural therapist on the permanent staff should be standard.
The children’s education suffers from their emotional states. Besides learning disabilities, which can be caused by emotional trauma, there is the question of motivation. Without a positive view of the future it is difficult to see the point in doing well. Often an adult they have connected with can motivate them, but they will do well for that person, not for themselves.
The attitude of schools to these children is another problem. Some of the orphanage children are badly behaved and disruptive in class and many are unmotivated. This does not help build good teacher pupil relations. They also miss the general education a child receives in a family home and activities children do with their parents.
Some hobbies are not possible, such as building models and painting. Some child is bound to destroy the model or painting. Since they have so few possessions, they have difficulty respecting other’s belongings. An abused child with a violated integrity does not easily understand other people’s private space and privacy.
There is an average of 56 children per home, but can be upwards to 100. Some children remain in a home for their whole childhood, while other children are arriving and leaving, bonds are breaking and forming all the time. There is also a turnover of carers. As much as they try, the Dom Dziecka system cannot give the sense of permanence and stability a well-adjusted home can.
The gaps in a child’s developmental needs, between the Children’s Home environment and a family home, are partially covered by volunteers, children’s organizations and churches. These activities vary and include supplying clothes and toys, taking the children on regular camps and giving the children teaching help. These camps and teaching generally focus on building up the children’s self-esteem and motivate them to look into the future with hope.
The Polish Children’s Homes serve an important role in today’s Polish society. They are doing a good job in a difficult situation, considering their lack of resources and with some of the children they have to take in, who are problematic.
It is not uncommon for these children to have parents who themselves grew up in a Children’s Home. This is a cycle and the cycle must be broken.
The way out of this cycle is to change the system and encourage foster families where the children can feel love, security, stability, and emotional warmth.
Polish Social Orphans
The Polish orphan system was initially aimed at war orphans. Over the decades since the Second World War the proportion of parentless orphans sank, until today when only about 4% of the children in the Polish Children’s Home system have lost both parents. The term “orphan” has changed to also include “social orphans.”
Social orphans are children who are wards of the state. They have at least one living parent, but are raised in institution like forms and not in a foster home. Their contact with their families is often sporadic and infrequent. When the parents do visit the orphanage the contact is not natural, and cannot meet the emotional and psychological needs of these disadvantaged children. It is like visiting an institution.
The children come from a variety of backgrounds. Some have been rejected or abandoned by their parents; others have been abused and mistreated by their parents, or neglected. Mostly they are from dysfunctional families. To be a natural (parentless) orphan is traumatic, but there can be closure. Their parents are not to blame for them being in an institution. With the social orphans the trauma can be far worse. Their parents are alive and do not care.
An alcoholic parent can go to therapy. A single parent, after a divorce, can struggle together with their child, to get the child back home, showing the child that s/he has worth. The child in the Children’s Home suffers daily, knowing the parent could get them out of their situation.
In the case of mental illness, the question is if it is not more cost effective for the state to treat the cause, with effective treatments, instead of institutionalizing the “problems.” This is not criticism of Poland specifically, as other countries also have myopic economic principles. With elections every 4 years and budget fixation on the next year, investing in the future, 10 to 20 years from now, does not enter a politicians mind.
90% of adults who were raised in the Children’s Home system struggle in life. 60% of Poland’s homeless have been raised in these orphanages. More than 90% have difficulties with relationships in their adult lives.
Research over long-term has show that social skills and emotional stability are more important in adult life than top marks at school. These qualities cannot be taught cognitively in a classroom environment. They are learned intuitively through experience in a family environment.
Poverty is a different situation. If the home was warm and had a loving atmosphere, the child suffers being institutionalized, but can still have a warm relationship with the parents. Once again investing in the parents can save society future expenses.
It is not uncommon for these children to have parents who themselves grew up in a Children’s Home. This is a cycle and the cycle must be broken.
The way out of this cycle is to change the system and encourage foster families where the children can feel love, security, stability, and emotional warmth.
Disclaimer: What is written above is not a critique of the staff in the Polish Children’s Home system, but with the system itself. The fault lies with politicians who do not give the resources these homes need. Most of the carers are doing the best they can with the limited resources they have available and there are many true heros among them, doing what is in their power to help the children under their care, despite being understaffed.
We host regular weekly activity meetings for children from orphanages in our area, with the Baptist Church in Elblag, north eastern Poland, but are focusing on young mothers who have left the orphanage system to find their place in society. We also work with the Christian Joy Foundation in Warsaw, which organises summer, winter and sports camps for children from Polish orphanages.
Christian Joy Foundation camp, summer 2007
We are concentrating on helping teenage mothers to raise their children in a family home environment and so prevent their children from being placed into the orphanage system.
If you would like to help this mission we welcome you to please donate towards helping these young mothers.
Any donation goes 100% to the cause as all overheads are covered.
does this orphanage do private adoptions?
We are not an orphanage. We help and support some young women who have grown up in the orphanage system, and are struggling to find their place in society outside an institutional environment.