We’ve even gone so far as hiring qualified single mothers so that they could stay here with their children in a safe place. Whether it’s counseling, short-term financial help, housing, etc. We will do everything in our power to keep the family together. Most of our children are referred to us by social workers just like they would be assigned to foster care families in the US, but occasionally a child will be brought to us by a parent asking us to take their child. I’m not saying some orphanages haven’t done this, or even continue to do this, but in my experience, it’s less frequent than some people would lead you to believe. Many people accuse orphanages of breaking up families just for the sake of filling their dorms. The work of orphan care is rarely black-and-white, there are a vast amount of gray areas that we work in every day. Being abandoned at that level leaves some deep scars. They need to be shown that they are not a mistake or just something to be thrown away. These abandoned children need to be cared for and raised in a way to show them how valuable they are. Once again these children are not technically orphans, they have parents somewhere. For whatever reason, in any society, a percentage of infants are abandoned by their parents. The mother might be too young, they might have hidden the pregnancy, or they don’t want to acknowledge it, they might be going through some deep psychological issues. Occasionally a woman will give birth and for any number of reasons decide to abandon that child. Even though they have been removed from a home situation for their protection, they still technically have parents and are not “orphans.” They need to be cared for, counseled, and brought to a place of healing. Some have gone through things that would rip your heart out if I were to detail them here. Some children are brought to us due to severe abuse or neglect. Because there are still parents somewhere, the children are older, or there are siblings in the picture, adoptions are pretty rare. We are big fans of adoption, but it’s not a reality for most children. The parents might be out there somewhere it’s just that reunification is impossible. Of the children in our care, 70% will never see blood relatives again. These children are technically not “orphans” but still need a home. Frequently there is no extended family available or willing to care for the thousands of children whose parents are no longer in their lives. If a parent or parents are in prison, rehab, or some other institutional situation where they can’t care for their child, the child needs to go somewhere.
![what is an orphan what is an orphan](https://www.sos-usa.org/getmedia/d860039b-68c7-49e7-9980-77b2134fdc35/orphan-in-stastics-child-poverty.jpg)
“If they’re not an orphan, why are they in your home?” Well, it gets complicated. The bulk of our children are not technically orphans in the traditional sense this sometimes surprises people. We care for about 120 children from newborn up through adulthood in a family-like setting. I, along with an exceptional team, run a large orphanage. Both UNICEF and World Vision define an orphan as a child who has lost one or both parents. But orphan can also define many other situations where the child might have a parent or two they just aren’t around to care for the child. Most people assume that an orphan is a child that has no parents.
![what is an orphan what is an orphan](https://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Orphan-Widow-design-term.jpg)
![what is an orphan what is an orphan](https://i1.rgstatic.net/publication/221276522_VM_Leakage_and_Orphan_Control_in_Open-Source_Clouds/links/5490447a0cf214269f266430/largepreview.png)
We'll let our children deal with it.What is the definition of an orphan? I know this sounds pretty straightforward but depending on who you talk to the definition of what an orphan is can vary widely. But we don't care, cause we'll be dead before they affect us again.
![what is an orphan what is an orphan](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KHZDFjWSlyY/WNa6pga55KI/AAAAAAAAEVU/9DrpwL5Ny780EzodYisCreiK4kSGV8neACLcB/s640/which%2Bchild%2Bis%2Ban%2Borphan%2Bfor%2Bblog.jpg)
We are effectively creating a short-term remedy for diseases and letting them mutate to ever more complex forms. The more antibiotics we manufacture, the more antibiotics will be needed in the future. Viruses are constantly forming new strands due to antibiotics. New diseases mutate as fast as human DNA, and can appear in random places and in random forms. So we are simply speeding their evolution, but they would evolve anyway eventually. When the body can effectively defend against these viruses, the viruses tend to evolve into new forms over time. March 2, antibiotics affect bacterial growths primarily, but influenza shots, for instance, often simply contain a small dose of the virus, which enables the body to effectively defend against it. This could also take the form of extra deposits of calcium on the cheekbones, in which case it would simply be considered a family trait and not necessarily a disease or problem. If a baby is born with lumps on his head and his brothers also develop lumps on the skull over time, then that family may have an orphan disease of random skull lumps. Random mutations in the human genome can be considered to be diseases.