Field Visit Report - Xinyu 2005

30,000 mu (200,000 square meters) of land has been purchased for the new building which will house both the elderly and children. It will cost 12 million yuan and the government will pay 5 million of this. When they sell the old buildings and land they will probably get 2 million yuan and the director has raised an additional 1 million so far. So he only has 4 million yuan to go and the construction will begin soon. Anyone who donates 200 yuan or more will get their name on a wall inside. Donations can be sent directly to XinYu to a special bank account that has been set up.

There currently 128 children under the care of the SWI of which 42 have disabilities. About 20 children live in the orphanage and the others are in foster care. There are three Amity Hugging Grannies. One works in the clinic and the other two work with the handicapped children and do some rehab exercises.

First we met one of our Hugging Grannies, Liu Zhongzhong, who is a nurse and mostly working in the orphanage clinic.

Foster Care Visits:

We visited YCH, a girl born December 1996 with the special need listed as mental retardation. She was wearing a pink dress that she was very proud of and sang “Mama Hao” for us. Although she has some retardation she is currently attending kindergarten. She is not able to speak clearly and they wonder if this is due to some problem with her tongue. Her vision tested as being poor. Her teacher says she is a good child and is obedient but she is not learning much. The foster mother has a child who is away at boarding high school.

Next we visited YZC – a boy born March 2003 who has congenital hydrocephalus. He will go to Nanchang in a few days with Yu Maomao to have surgery for this. The foster mother’s grown daughters were both visiting, each bringing with them their child. It appeared they were used to playing with YZC.

YZZ lives on the fifth floor of an apartment building near the orphanage. She goes to kindergarten and the teachers say she is quiet and a “good girl”. She does as well in class as the other children. We were told that her speech is fine, she is able to communicate with the other children and sing. She did sing the first line of “Mama Hao” for us. When we observed her walking she walked with a somewhat wide-based gait with the right leg not appearing as strong or coordinated as the left. She can’t open her right hand on her own but it is not stiff or contracted. She can hold something in that hand if we put it in her hand and put her fingers around it. She is not able to raise the right arm above shoulder level. We encouraged the foster mom to do some range of motion exercises with the arm and some hand strengthening exercises such as squeezing a rubber ball. When someone said, “Maybe she will be adopted some day”, her foster mom replied, “How can I give her up?” The director feels her condition has improved a lot. He has talked with the Tomorrow Plan specialist about possible treatment for her, he invited the doctor to XinYu who is interested in helping. The doctor asked to have her brought to the participating hospital for a brain scan and possible treatment and this will be done soon.

YX lives on the sixth floor of the same building as YZZ. She was very quiet during our visit but did answer some questions. She has orthopedic shoes but they've had a lot of problems getting ones that fit properly and are still working on this.

The following morning the director and assistant director brought YHF with them when they came to the hotel to have breakfast with us. She is studying nursing at XinYu Clinical College and seems happy there. She was fairly talkative and seemed like a nice girl, on the way from the restaurant out to the van she held hands with my daughter.

When Zhou Bo (from Amity) and I were later discussing buying books for students at Gao’an Zhou Bo suggested that we buy some books for the XinYu students, especially YHF, and I said we would be happy to do this.



	Report of the Field Visit to XinYu Orphanage May 2005 by Dr. Peggy Gurrad

		The director is quite excited about his plans for a new orphanage building and talked about this during our initial meeting and during breakfast the next day, at which time he gave us some informational brochures. Right now he feels his buildings are among the worst, but with the new building will be the best in the province.


	In the rehab room we met Grannies Cao Jianling and Li Faying. Faying was doing exercises with a child that recently had surgery for a club foot and will soon need an abdominal surgery. There are some additional photos of them working with the children and of some of the other children in the room.