The Orphan Factory | Russia Beyond The Headlines

The Orphan Factory | Russia Beyond The Headlines

November 21, 2011
Boris Altshuler

In Russia, there is a widespread trend of separating children from parents, much more so than in other countries. The rights of troubled parents are signed away with relative ease. Their children are known as social orphans.

The problem of separating children from parents is still urgent in Russia. Source: Getty Images/Fotobank

There are fewer children today than there were ten years ago because of a shrinking population generally. In 1998, there were 22 million schoolchildren in the country; in 2010, there were 12.8 million, a drop of 42 percent in 12 years.

Yet there are more than 100,000 new orphans in Russia every year (more than 300 a day).  About one quarter of these children are swelling the populations of orphanages while the rest are being placed in the care of close relatives.

 In 2009, the permanent population of child-care institutions was more than 300,000. Almost 100,000 of them had no parents, while the rest had been voluntarily “surrendered” by their parents to the state because the children had health problems or because the family was poor or dysfunctional. The list of family problems includes drug addiction and alcoholism but is topped by poverty, which in Russia affects children above all.    

The underlying cause of this “orphan factory” is the rudimentary state of the social services available to a family in distress. Hundreds of thousands of families with disabled children have the worst of it: nobody helps them, and there is no support. Rather, officials press them to put their child in a state-run boarding school.

Russia traditionally has gigantic boarding schools with hundreds of children. The country regularly reads shocking reports about children’s rights violations in these closed “child dumps.” Highly professional legislative and other initiatives based on the best Russian and world practices have been put forward many times and received support at the top political level in the country. Somehow, this help has not yet reached our children.

Yet the billions of budget dollars annually funneled into supporting children’s boarding schools make this orphan factory system incredibly stable.

Another problem is segregation in the educational realm. Children with special educational needs (for reasons of poor health, poor knowledge of Russian) cannot cope with the basic curriculum, cannot study together with “normal” children and are likely to be transferred to special (correctional) classes and boarding schools. The final link in this chain of “educational isolation” is children’s homes for mentally handicapped children (DDIs), which are not educational institutions at all. The widespread practice is over-diagnosis of mental disability, which “buries alive” many children, who are simply excluded from the life.

Some cases have been reported of children with officially hopeless diagnoses being taken out of DDIs by families. After some time and with encouragement, they were perfectly able to study in an ordinary school with ordinary children.

In January 2010, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev approved the national education initiative “Our New School,” which puts an end to the above-mentioned traditional segregation in education. For more than a year now, the nation has been discussing the new draft law “On Education,” which is designed to implement the presidential initiative. The legislative process reached a stalemate, however, because educational conservatives have been against it.

The priority measures to solve these problems are obvious: the country desperately needs social housing and “a food economy for the poor,” involving the production of staple food items. Social services in Russia must be oriented toward helping families with children at their place of residence, if possible, without taking the child away from the parents. Yet so far, all attempts to implement the so-badly needed reforms inevitably run up against a wall of corruption and monopoly.

Boris Altshuler is the chairman of the board of the regional NGO Right of the Child and a member of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation.

Missing Child Case Closed

Source unknown.

International Adoption in Ireland

Changing times: majority of domestic adoptions now sought by step-parents
Monday March 19 2012


There were 39 orders made for adoption of Irish children in this country last year but very few involved birth mothers giving their baby up for adoption.

Few Irish women give their babies up for adoption any more, which leads to couples going abroad in their thousands to countries like Russia and China in the last decade to adopt a child.

Of the 39 domestic adoptions, a figure which was released by Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald, she pointed out a "very small number" involved children placed for adoption in the traditional sense.

The rest would have involved a step-parent making an application to adopt the child of their spouse. This is an increasing feature in modern Ireland as couples divorce and remarry.

Other orders made here for domestic adoption last year involved the adoption of children in long-term foster care by their foster parents.

This must involve the consent of the child's birth mother or the obtaining of a High Court order showing the child has been "abandoned" by the parent.

Other domestic adoptions can involve a relative, such as a grandparent, uncle or aunt adopting a child.

Some of the 47 applications made last year are still being processed so the eventual number is likely to be higher.

In 2010 there were 153 applications received and 189 orders made for domestic adoptions, the Minister added.

Meanwhile, an audit carried out by the Adoption Authority in 2010 has found no official files exist for 99 people who were adopted.

Around 50pc of these relate to so called adoptions prior to the introduction of regulation of adoption in 1952.

The Authority only holds records since this date.

Legislation is planned to allow the Authority to access records currently held by a wide range of information services.

Camp Clio

Good morning. I want to let you know that the Adoption Institute is involved in an exciting new project: We’re developing best practices for a summer camp! It’s called Camp Clio, and it is unique. Adopted and non-adopted children will come together in a beautiful setting in Connecticut to share games, meals, and "old-fashioned" activities like swimming, canoeing, sailing, arts and crafts, and campfires. For the adopted kids, it will also be a camp within a camp – a place full of fun activities that will allow them to express and explore their feelings about adoption; create a positive outlet for ideas and emotions; and increase self-awareness and self-esteem. Camp Clio’s campers will have their own cabins, which they will share with teenage counselors who also are adopted.

You can learn more about the camp – including how to sign up – from the attached postcard or at www.campclio.org. Then please forward this message far and wide, and encourage adoptive parents to enroll their children for this wonderful new opportunity, one in which they can grow as young people even as they have a blast as kids.

Last thing: If you know any adopted teens who want to be counselors for a couple of weeks this summer, they’re taking applications. To apply or for information about the camp, email info@CampClio.org or call 646-285-6237.

Lost & Found

Great video by AlJazeera about the children stolen from "subversives" during Argentina's Dirty War. Absolutely fascinating look at love versus loyalty or love and politics. Runtime ~ 23 minutes

Kristin Chenoweth on Being Adopted

Kristin Chenoweth Opens Up About Her Adoption

With DNA Testing, Suddenly They Are Family

By RACHEL L. SWARNS

Published: January 23, 2012

ST. LOUIS — Growing up, Khrys Vaughan always believed that she had inherited her looks and mannerisms from her father, and that her appreciation for tradition and old-fashioned gentility stemmed from her parents’ Southern roots. But those facets of her self-image crumbled when she was told, at age 42, that she had been adopted.

Enlarge This Image

Erin McCracken for The New York Times

Khrys Vaughan, left, of St. Louis and her cousin Jennifer Grigsby of Somerset, Ky., meeting for the first time last week.

She began searching for her origins, only to find out that her adoption records had been sealed, a common practice in the 1960s. Then Mrs. Vaughan stumbled across an ad from a DNA testing company offering to help people who had been adopted find clues to their ancestry and connections to blood relatives.

About five weeks after shipping off two tiny vials of her cells from a swab of her cheek, Mrs. Vaughan received an e-mail informing her that her bloodlines extended to France, Romania and West Africa. She was also given the names and e-mail addresses of a dozen distant cousins. This month, she drove 208 miles from her hometown here to Evansville, Ind., to meet her third cousin, the first relative to respond to her e-mails. Mrs. Vaughan is black and her cousin is white, and they have yet to find their common ancestor. But Mrs. Vaughan says that does not matter.

“Somebody is related to me in this world,” she said. “Somebody out there has my blood. I can look at her and say, ‘This is my family.’ ”

A growing number of adoptees, now in the thousands, are turning to DNA testing companies in hopes of piecing together the puzzles of their beginnings. Some long to learn whether their family trees first bloomed in Ireland or Italy, Europe or South America. Others want to know whether they are genetically predisposed to developing diabetes, cancer or other diseases. Most adoptees are hungry for information that will lead to their birth parents, but some are also expanding their conception of family as they embrace a far-flung constellation of second, third and fourth cousins.

Some DNA testing companies have been stepping up their efforts to reach out to this community over the past several years, posting advertisements on adoption message boards and testimonials on their Web sites. Adoptees and some groups that serve them are also spreading the word. “There has never been a better time to establish your biological identity,” says the Web site of Adoption.com, which promotes its efforts to unite adoptees and blood relatives.

Genetic testing has surged in popularity over the last decade, as the cost of analyzing cell samples has dropped and as Americans have grown more interested in learning about their heritage. As a result, some companies have amassed enough DNA samples that they can offer to help adoptees identify their kin, bringing hope to people born in an era when adoption records were routinely sealed, leaving few paper trails to follow.

Several companies provide tests that can confirm whether adoptees are related to individuals they already know. Others cast a wider net by plugging DNA results into databases that contain tens of thousands of genetic samples, provided mostly by people searching for their ancestral roots. The tests detect genetic markers that reveal whether people share a common ancestor or relative.

Some experts on adoption and genetics have criticized ancestry and genealogy testing companies, saying they are, at times, connecting people whose genetic links are tenuous — in effect stretching the definition of a relative. Nevertheless, the growing popularity of the tests, combined with social media sites that connect people day to day, has given some adoptees a sense of family that feels tangible, intimate and immediate.

Within minutes of receiving the names of her distant relatives, Mrs. Vaughan, a freelance project manager, was admiring their photographs on Facebook. Another adoptee who found family through DNA testing, Kathy Borgmann, a 49-year-old corn farmer in New Palestine, Ind., exchanged e-mails with cousins who delighted her by saying, “Welcome to the family.”

Alan Bogner of Olympia, Wash., felt such kinship with his newly discovered second and third cousins that he attended their family reunion in Iowa. He learned, among other things, that many of them were also tall — he is 6-foot-5 — and that they shared his liberal politics.

“It sounds so baloney, but they’re just so much like me,” said Mr. Bogner, 54, who works for the governor’s office.

The tests have their limitations. The price of testing can range from $99 to more than $500, putting them out of reach for some people. Company officials also caution that it is much more common to find second and third cousins than birth parents or siblings. Neil Schwartzman of Montreal struck gold when his test connected him with his sister — “I was gob-smacked,” he recalled — but such cases are not typical.

Company officials say the odds are improving, though, as more people pay for tests and add their DNA to the pool of potential matches. Two testing companies — Family Tree DNA and 23andMe — have databases that contain samples from 350,000 and 125,000 people, respectively, and their executives say those numbers are rising. In recent years, about 9,000 of their customers have identified themselves as adoptees, company officials say, but they believe the actual number is larger since not everyone shares their reasons for testing.

For somebody looking for a match, “maybe there’s no one in the database today, but in two years a first cousin might be there,” said Anne Wojcicki, the chief executive of 23andMe.

DNA testing companies, which compete for customers, do not pool their databases, so people often submit samples to more than one.

Not everyone is hoping to find new relatives. Some adoptees who have found genetic matches have been rebuffed by their distant kin. Most people take genealogical DNA tests to fill gaps in their family trees, not to find new members of their clans. Mr. Bogner said several cousins identified through DNA testing stopped communicating once they learned he was adopted. “It was horribly disappointing,” he said.

Elizabeth Bartholet, an expert on adoption at Harvard Law School, said the proliferation of testing highlights the need for broader access to adoption records. In the meantime, she says, adoptees would be better served by nurturing the relationships they already have.

But Mrs. Vaughan, who is now 44, said her newfound relatives have filled a void in her life. Her adoptive father died when she was 9, and she had found comfort over the years knowing that she shared his smile. “I was crying because I wasn’t Daddy’s little girl,” said Mrs. Vaughan, describing the day that her adoptive mother finally told her the truth. “I needed to find my place in the world.”

She sent out her first e-mail to a cousin identified by Family Tree DNA in March. It landed in the inbox of Jennifer Grigsby, a research analyst from Somerset, Ky., who read it with astonishment. Mrs. Grigsby had taken a DNA test to learn more about her lineage. “I wasn’t looking for a new relationship,” she said. But when the two women started talking, “there was like an instant connection,” said Mrs. Grigsby, 37.

They started exchanging e-mails and Facebook messages every week, and calling once or twice a month. A few weeks ago, they decided to meet in Evansville, midway between their homes. But three days before their get-together, Mrs. Vaughan learned the identity of her birth mother. The courts had determined that her mother had died in 2005, which meant that her name could finally be released. The discovery led her to four sisters.

Mrs. Grigsby offered to cancel their plans so Mrs. Vaughan could connect with her siblings. But Mrs. Vaughan would have nothing of it. Last week, she drove more than three hours to see the first blood relative who had embraced her as family. “Finally!” she said when they met, and she hugged her third cousin as if she would never let go.