To Be An Orphan

              

It is interesting to note that universally children raised in institutions or orphanages in the western world have on average an underdeveloped IQ of 20% less than those in foster care for obvious reasons: the lack of any love, belonging, family, or meaningful individual attention. The children here, the undeveloped IQ would often prove to be the least of their challenges, and in Ireland and other countries it could be fatal as well, and too often it was.

The success in all other fields for their cousins, the foster care children, are better overall: 40% become homeless, 60% are convicted of crime, and 48% are long term un-employed; yet over 70% of them want to attend college.

The global problem is that children, no matter what the label attached to them or the circumstance that left them orphans, can only cry in despair. It is the hardest sound to ignore, that of a crying child no matter what colour, creed or circumstance. It is also a growing problem that is being ignored partly because of the sheer scale of it today: 153 million orphans have lost one parent and 18 million have lost both.

Whatever about the countries that have orphans, and all of them do, most of these children become very easily influenced and pliable to joining gangs, violent extremists groups, and any alphabet soup of others that usually have a very negative point of view starting with a ‘them and us’ hard line attitude. It is their first family and often their last. A bond that is hard to break and if they do not break it a solution will be found in another institution called prison.

It costs a staggering £100,000 sterling per year to keep a prisoner in the UK. This sum is relevant to any country whether rich or poor. The prisons become colleges for crime in an environment that replicates orphan youth. They are really just a home away from home. It replaces the problem of not having to ask for help outside, as social rejection becomes an insult they cannot take anymore. When that line is crossed little empathy or sympathy waits on either side of it. A rejected and angry child without any means of simple and basic emotional support will prove to be a more than a handful when they become adults.  

It costs a lot less than £100,000 per year to change the life of an orphan child and should not be left to the fickleness of charity. It is a government responsibility and a time bomb if ignored. For the child with food, a more stable citizen is formed in the long term if personal space is given with the sustenance of counseling to see through the fog of their less than ideal circumstances. Material and emotional poverty cannot be that easily separated. On an international level the solution in helping orphan children is urgent and beyond an emergency for it affects everyone whether they ignore it or not.

Barry Clifford