Report of the Field Visit to Yichun Orphanage

May 2005 by Dr. Peggy Gurrad

The Director is new in the last year or so.  He had been in the army until 1990 then worked in the orphanage for about a year and a half and then was the driver for the Director of Civil Affairs until he became the director for the SWI.  He seems open to new ideas and wants to help the children.  

He reports that they currently have 74 children under their care.  72 are abandoned children and 2 are true orphans (their parents have died and the director knows who their parents were).  These two orphans are older children and are attending school.  

There are 57 healthy children.  Twelve live in the orphanage and the rest in foster care.  There are fifteen children with disabilities and nine of them live in foster care (most if not all are sponsored by Amity).  

The orphanage receives 150 yuan per month per child from the government to pay for their food, clothing, medical care, etc.  The government also provides the building and a certain number of staff.  

The orphanage pays for the foster care that is not sponsored by Amity.  Currently there are no other groups providing assistance.  They pay their foster families 160 yuan per month and give them food for the child (so this is more money than they receive for each child from the government).  

We sponsor two foster children in kindergarten and three children who live in the orphanage in primary school.  

We have three Hugging Grannies.  Two are working with the disabled children and one is working with the infants/toddlers.  One of the Grannies was able to attend the Granny’s Conference we had in Nanchang and received some training in rehab exercises from Dr. Hong.  

First we visited the infants and toddlers.  They are now in a new building behind the apartment-like building that houses the disabled children.  The playground equipment we bought is next to this building.  As you enter the building there is a wall in the entrance area that has some photos that have been sent to the orphanage of adopted children.  There is a new room downstairs with cribs and walkers that are currently not being used.  

Our Granny in the infant/toddler room is An Xinyun, who takes the place of previous Granny Zhong Wanxiu.  She also is a retired worker.  There were 12 infants/toddlers in this room which the morning we visited had two orphanage caregivers and our Granny with them.  There was one premature baby that had been at the orphanage for 2 weeks and is gaining weight steadily.  The rest of the children were old enough to be in walkers.  

These children had all been in foster care but had come back to the orphanage because of the governments recent regulation change that says all children must return to the orphanage from foster care as soon as their papers are sent to Beijing .  Amity was very upset with this policy and tells the orphanage they should not follow it.  The orphanage staff says this group of children is harder to care for, especially when they first came back.  They were used to the attention they were getting from a foster mom and family and cried a lot and were much more demanding than the institutionalized baby.

We then visited the apartment where the disabled children live and our two other Grannies are.  Peng Xialian was holding a baby with a deformed ear.  She is the one who received some rehab training at the Granny conference.  The third Granny, Liu Chunxiu, was holding a baby who has “epilepsy” and some type of “brain problem” on her head CT – their interpretation of the results is that her brain is “shrinking”.   

Our three primary students live in this area.  YHY was there when we visited and she is now in grade 3.  YDT is also now in grade 3 but she wasn’t there because she is with a possible adoptive local family on a trial basis.  Apparently, she had previously been adopted by a Chinese family but that adoption failed so the orphanage director doesn’t know for sure if this one will work out.  YDL was also not there because she is now in grade 5, so must attend school on Saturdays.  There were two other older girls there at the time.  The first girl is 20 years old.  She has not had education since there is no school for the blind available.  The second girl is 18 years old and has had some primary school education.

Visiting Foster Care Families:

YWP is a dwarf so now that this is apparent the orphanage is not sure they guessed correctly at her age initially (she is growing some gray hairs).  Because of this as well as some mental retardation and her refusal or inability to speak, the kindergarten will not accept her so she is currently not attending school.  

YJP, born May 1997, is in the same foster home as YWP.  Although she does have some mental retardation, she has recently started kindergarten.

YJW, born June 1998, lives in the same building but up on the fifth floor.  She and her foster mother came down to meet us at the home of the above two children.  She has ambiguous genitalia but for now they are treating her as a girl.  She also recently started kindergarten.

Next we visited YJJ who lives in a different area.  Her foster parents have a small store, so she is there during the day and then they have an apartment on the second floor above and behind the store.  They also foster a healthy baby from the orphanage.  YJJ has a deformity of her leg which is mostly at her ankle and upper foot.  When she puts weight on it her foot turns in.  She will be taken to Nanchang next week for an exam to see what treatment is indicated and possibly to get a special shoe or brace made.  

YAQ was next.  Only her foster dad was home because her foster mom had gone to the funeral of a relative.  This is a new home for her because her previous foster mom had moved to another city.  She has cerebral palsy (and possibly also some mental retardation) and they say she can’t walk.  When they try to stand her up she falls which is how she got the scrape on her nose.  This foster family also cares for a healthy baby from the orphanage.  The father appeared very caring but someone may need to work with this family some to see if they will be able to adequately care for this special needs child.

YFY and YFJ both live in this same foster home.  They both have congenital heart disease and have had their surgery done in Tianjing (near Beijing ).  The surgeries were paid for by Tomorrow Plan.   

The orphanage director has requested more support for foster care, since the orphanage sponsored foster care is costing them more money per child then they receive from the government.  Wu An An (Amity) again told them they would need to stop bringing the children back from foster care so early, our support would be conditional on them not bringing them back.  She also felt they need to find some higher income families, perhaps starting with new foster children.  She would not recommend removing children from foster homes where they are already well attached.  The current homes are in some of the poorer areas but actually okay on the inside and the children seem well cared for and attached.  But Wu An An ’s feeling was that overall foster care for children is improved with families with a higher income (and often more education).  She recommended that the baby with the deformed ear in the room with the Grandmas and disabled children be placed in foster care.  If we provide additional foster care support to Yichun, Wu An An wasn’t sure if we should support additional specific children or if we should give them a small monthly stipend for each child they (the orphanage) are sponsoring in foster care so they can boost the stipend for all the foster families.  It appears that the Assistant Director is doing much of the work with the children’s division and he is the one that visits the foster families which he does frequently.  

Top