Month: June 2020

Denver Newsroom, Jun 24, 2020 / 05:13 pm (CNA).- The millions of children separated from their families around the world would do best in a family environment, not institutional care, and leaders should prioritize a collaborative, well-managed shift toward family-centered care, according a report from a commission based in the Lancet Group of medical journals.

 
“The global intent to provide optimal care for separated children has never been greater. Momentum to move children from institutions and into families is building, led by welcomed evidence and practical leadership from many sectors within child health, child protection, and social welfare,” said the report’s executive summary, authored by The Lancet Psychiatry editor-in-chief Niall Boyce; Jane Godsland, editor-in-chief of The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health; and King’s College London professor Edmund Sonuga-Barke.
 
“It is essential that governments, voluntary organizations, and health and social care professionals work together so that action is not taken precipitately, with potentially unintended adverse consequences, but is instead timely, sustainable, and child-centered,” they said.
 
The last century in North America and most of Europe has seen a major shift toward family-based care.
 
“The same shift elsewhere in the world is urgently needed,” said the commission report’s executive summary.
 
As of 2015, 5-6 million children were estimated to live in institutions such as orphanages and residential homes in some 137 countries, most of which are low or middle income. In some countries this number has decreased, but in others the numbers have increased due to HIV. The commission said factors driving institutionalization include poverty, social deprivation, poor parenting skills, illness and disability of the child or the carer, natural and manmade disasters, and child abuse and neglect.
 
Institutional care is usually inconsistent, with poorly paid and poorly trained staff. High staff turnover hurts the possibility of building relationships and providing basic standards of care. Children might suffer mistreatment from both staff and their peers.
 
“Institutional care denies children and adolescents access to kinship networks that have a major role in many societies,” the commission report said.
 
“Institutionalization often has a profound effect on a child’s physical and psychological development and can be associated with long-term mental health problems,” the report continued. At least 80% of institutionalized children were below average in physical growth and cognitive development, and they face greater risk of attachment problems. There are “strong negative associations between institutional care and children’s development, especially in relation to physical growth, cognition and attention.”
 
The effects could be especially harmful to babies and young children aged six to 24 months. Longer stays in institutions are associated with larger delays in development. These effects can be “rapidly reversed, especially in physical growth and brain growth, but the children most affected can face longer-term effects.” However, the situation of these children “rapidly improves” when they leave institutions for family-based care in adoption, kinship, or foster care.
 
“Moving children from institutions to families requires the coordination of an integrated set of global, national, and local initiatives,” the commission said. “Only a combined effort that links national and international policies and resources with local knowledge and practices can create meaningful, sustainable change. Global development, governmental, donor, faith-based, and volunteer agencies need to work together to transform care systems, address the drivers of institutionalization, support child protection, and end child trafficking.”
 
The commission encouraged policy makers to reconsider incentives that support children’s institutions, including tax breaks for donations, financial transfers and volunteer tourism “voluntourism” to visit children’s institutions. Rather, policymakers should incentivize the promotion of family-based care.
 
National frameworks must be established to eliminate institutions and to reform care for children in need, with good data collection and monitoring of care. Workforce development is needed for new professions that support family-based care, and funding should be redirected from institutions to family-based care in “a deliberate, phased and safe manner.” The ultimate goal should be “safe, sustainable, and nurturing family-based care for every child.”
 
The means to this goal should include strengthening family-based alternatives, a broader child protection system, and the progressive elimination of institutions.
 
The report pointed to the Rwanda program Let’s Raise Children in Families as an example. That program has the support of the government, the Catholic Church, and many other non-profit groups.
 
Sonuga-Barke, the King’s College London professor, chaired the Lancet group commission on the subject of institutionalization and deinstitutionalization of children. The commission’s leaders are 22 experts on reforming care for children. Its report includes a review and a meta-analysis of the effects of institutionalization and de-institutionalization, plus 14 policy recommendations.
 
The first part of the commission’s work was published in The Lancet Psychiatry journal, while the second part was published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health journal. Sonuga-Barke said this work is both “a call to action to end the scourge of institutionalization” and “a carefully considered and practical plan of action for agencies working at all levels across the international community.”
 
“Building on the very welcome growing momentum for a shift from institutional to family-based care, this commission calls for a step change in the rate of de-institutionalization and the promotion and delivery of high-quality family-based care alternatives,” he said.
 
Religious organizations have a role in this work.
 
“Faith-based organizations and leaders should work with other stakeholders and use their voices to change knowledge, attitudes, and practices in their communities to promote the protection of children in family-based care, and to strengthen families,” the Lancet group journals said June 23.
 
The commission was supported by the Lumos Foundation and led by Lumos, King’s College London, and the global child welfare advocacy group Maestral International.
 
Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops’ international aid agency, has been active in working to move children from institutions to family-based care. In October 2018, the agency launched its “Changing the Way We Care” program. As of February 2020, CRS-backed programs to change care systems have begun in Guatemala, Kenya, and Moldova. It hopes to expand these programs to Haiti, India, Indonesia, and Lebanon.
 
The initiative is joined by the Lumos Foundation and Maestral International, the same groups that supported the Lancet group’s commission. CRS partners include national governments, the Better Care Network, and the Faith to Action Initiative.  The program itself is backed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the MacArthur Foundation, and the GHR Foundation.
 
“With COVID-19, we have been working on being agile so we can continue our work supporting governments and local actors in these countries to continue to support children and families,” Megan Gilbert, a CRS spokesperson, told CNA June 23. “In other words, we are continuing with the work despite the coronavirus, and we are considering the impact the virus has on families and children.”

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Denver Newsroom, Jun 24, 2020 / 04:08 pm (CNA).- As rioters across the United States target statues depicting historical figures, the Bishop of Madison, Wisconsin on Tuesday denounced that destruction, along with calls to destroy some depictions of Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgina Mary.

“Should certain statues be placed in museums or storage? Perhaps. Should we let a group of vandals make those decisions for us? No,” Bishop Donald Hying of Madison said in a June 23 letter.

“If we allow the commemorative and visual history of our nation to be destroyed by random groups in the current moment of anger, how will we ever learn from that history? Does toppling and vandalizing a statue of George Washington because he owned slaves, really serve our country and our collective memory?” 

Hying also responded to a recent viral tweet from podcast host and activist Shaun King, who said June 22 that “statues of the white European they claim is Jesus” are a form of “white supremacy” and ought to be torn down, along with “all murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends.”

Hying noted that every culture, country, ethnicity, and race “has claimed Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary as their own,” depicting them with their culture’s skin color and dressed in their culture’s garb. 

The Catechism states in paragraph 1149, that “the liturgy of the Church presupposes, integrates and sanctifies elements from creation and human culture, conferring on them the dignity of signs of grace, of the new creation in Jesus Christ.”

For example, the bishop mentioned, Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared as “mestiza,” or “mixed” race; African art depicts Jesus as black, and Mary in African cultural garb; and there are numerous Asian representations of Mary as well.

While at some points in the Church’s history, some have mistakenly equated “the fullness of Catholicism with European culture,” Catholics should instead strive for “unity in that which is essential, and diversity in those things which are not,” Hying said.

“In this context, are white representations of Christ and His Mother inherently signs of white supremacy? I think not. Because the Son of God became incarnate in our human flesh, does not all of humanity – every race, tribe, and tongue – have the spiritual ability to depict Him through the particular lens of their own culture?” the bishop asked.

Depictions of Jesus are holy to Christians, he said— they are physical manifestations of God’s love, and remind us of the “nearness of the divine.”

“The secular iconoclasm of the current moment will not bring reconciliation, peace, and healing. Such violence will only perpetuate the prejudice and hatred it ostensibly seeks to end…Only the love of Christ can heal a wounded heart, not a vandalized piece of metal,” Hying concluded.

In Madison on Tuesday, rioters pulled down a statue of Hans Christian Heg— an abolitionist who famously fought against Confederates and slave-catchers— and threw it into Madison’s Lake Monona. Though the Heg statue has since been recovered, it suffered serious damage and is missing its head and a leg.

A statue known as “Lady Forward”— a replica of a famous statue created by a woman, and depicting progress— also was torn down and was dragged at least a block through the center of Madison by rioters.

Across the country, protestors have in recent days toppled statutes of Confederate leaders and figures associated with slavery, but have also, in some places, pulled down statues of Catholic saints, abolitionists, and other figures.

The violence in Madison reached a fever pitch Tuesday night when protestors attacked and injured State Senator Tim Carpenter (D-Milwaukee) near the Wisconsin state capitol, ostensibly because Carpenter was filming the protests with his phone.

Speaking to CNA on Tuesday, Hying emphasized that many of the most successful protests of the Civil Rights era were predicated on Christian ideas of nonviolence, and a Scriptural understanding of the human person.

The principles of Catholic social teaching— the dignity of the human person; the value of solidarity, “we’re all in this together;” a preferential option for the poor— need to be present in any Catholic’s response to injustice, he said. 

“If it’s not grounded in that, then it really ends up being about power— that I need to assert my power, in situations where I feel powerless,” he explained.

“It becomes a struggle over power, rather than a transformational relationship into how God wants us to live as brothers and sisters.”

Some Catholic figures on social media have called for bishops to attend the rallies in their cities and physically prevent rioters from tearing down statues. 

Hying said anything a bishop does in public must be rooted in a “prayerful, spiritual response,” and not in any political motivation.

Any political movement that does not recognize the dignity of every person is prone to “power politics” and violence, Hying said.

“I think our presence always needs to be related to a prayerful presence. If we’re going to be somewhere publicly, I don’t think it’s in a rally context, I don’t think it’s in a political context…it has to be a context of prayer. Otherwise I think it can get co-opted by the politics of the moment.”

Many Catholics and even some bishops have attended and prayed at peaceful rallies across the country.

Hying said it is clear to him that the violence and ill-treatment of Native Americans and the oppression of African Americans through slavery are two of the country’s greatest moral failings.

The situation requires, he wrote in his letter, better knowledge of history and respectful discussions about statues, buildings, and memorials.

“We must study and know this history in order to transcend it, to learn from it and to commit ourselves to justice, equality, and solidarity because of it,” Hying said.

“At the same time, even the worst aspects of history should be remembered and kept before our eyes. Auschwitz remains open as both a memorial and a museum, so that humanity never forgets the horror of the Holocaust.”

Protestors in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park tore down a statue of St. Junipero Serra on June 20, along with statues of Francis Scott Key and Ulysses S. Grant. In Los Angeles the same day, rioters pulled down a statue of Serra in the city’s downtown.

While many activists today associate Serra with the abuses that the Native Americans suffered, biographies and historical records suggest that Serra actually advocated on behalf of the Natives against the Spanish military and against encroaching European settlement.

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco decried “mob rule” that led to the tearing down of Serra’s statue in his city. Bishop Thomas Daly of Spokane, Washington, a California native, also condemned the statues’ destruction.

“The Church, by no means, desires injustice to go unanswered, but two wrongs do not make a right. If we cannot acknowledge the good of a saint such as Junipero Serra, we risk preferring ideology to the truth,” Daly said June 22.

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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 24, 2020 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday to bolster the federal government’s work with community and faith-based groups in adoption and foster care.

Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said that the order “lays out bold reforms for our work with states, communities, and faith-based partners.”

According to the HHS, the order will encourage better partnerships between states and faith-based and community organizations in adoption and foster care, help publicize best practices, and states and local authorities to recruit more foster and adoptive families.

Bethany Christian Services, which provides social services in more than 30 states and more than a dozen countries, praised the order for its insistence that the federal government work together with community and faith-based organizations in an “‘all hands on deck’ approach.”

The group said Wednesday that the new order “underscores the need for all facets of our nation to work better together for the sake of vulnerable children: governments, states, nonprofit partners, faith communities, and families.”

HHS says the order will also “increase the availability of trauma-informed training” to help caregivers, and investigate possible “barriers to federal assistance” for youth leaving foster care.

There are currently around 430,000 children in the foster care system, according to HHS. Nearly 20,000 children age out of the system each year without having been adopted. 

“We must improve equitable outcomes within our child welfare system through child and family-centric innovative solutions and a collaborative ‘all hands on deck’ approach,” Bethany said. “One sector of society can’t meet this need on its own; it will take all of us working together.”

The National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA)–which won a free speech case at the Supreme Court in 2018–also applauded the order. The group’s president Thomas Glessner stated on Wednesday that “we cannot talk about the end of abortion in America without mentioning adoption as a solution.”

White House senior advisor Kellyanne Conway told reporters on Wednesday that the order would aim to bolster foster care and adoption agencies which have been affected by the pandemic.

The pandemic posed serious challenges for social services agencies in matching foster children with families, and for the routines of the children themselves.

A staff member at St. Vincent Catholic Charities in Lansing, Michigan, told CNA in April that the disruption to the childrens’ routines of meeting with birth parents or school friends was “a trauma” for them.

The executive order comes ahead of a Supreme Court case involving Catholic Social Services in Philadelphia. In 2018, the city stopped referrals of foster children with the organization due to its faith-based stance on marriage. The case has been scheduled for the Supreme Court’s fall 2020 term.

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