Are there any states, other than New Troy, that still have orphanages? Almost every state I know of has a foster care system instead.

In L&C, there was the building in Smart Kids, which could have been a reform school but I didn't think that would have siblings. Also there was the Coates Orphanage.

Any thoughts?


Elisabeth

I always thought that there were orphanages as well as foster care--the orphanages would be where the children would go if foster caregivers were not available. You learn something new every day, I guess.

New Troy definitely has foster homes as well, Jack's little brother Denny went to "a good foster home."

Not all kids who are removed from their families are in foster care. I think there are still some group homes, especially for teenagers (my aunt and uncle were houseparents for one years ago), and there are still definitely long-term shelters for abused kids; there is one a few miles from my house. So they may not be "orphans" as such, but they could be living in a group home with their siblings.

Hi Elisabeth,

I'm a foster parent in Indiana. In our community there are several possible reasons why a child might live in a group facility instead of a foster home:

1) The child has medical problems that require full-time care in a hospital or nursing home.

2) The child has mental health issues that require full-time care (i.e. schizophrenic adoloescents).

3) The child has behavioral issues that prevent her adjusting to family life. We have a residential mental health facility that takes kids as young as 10. These are kids that start fires, sexually act out with other kids, beat up other kids, constantly run away, make serious suicide attempts--the kind of behaviors that require 24-hour adult supervision. The show implied that this was what the Beckworth School was. I believe the term they used was 'problem kids.' Amy's little sister was much too young for a place like that, and all the Smart Kids were way too well-behaved for one.

4) The child is incarcerated because of criminal behavior (that would be Jimmy & Jack's juvie hall).

5) There aren't enough foster homes available. In that case, the youngest kids get 'first dibs' and the older teenagers could wind up in a group home whose focus is teaching them to live on their own when they age out of the system.

Ten is the youngest age I've heard of for a child to be placed in a group setting.

Hope that helps. If you have specific questions, shoot me an e-mail.

My husband works at one of the facilities in #3 and I know they've had kids as young as 8, though not often. Most are 10-19 with most of them in the middle of that range. They also have an emergency shelter for kids who have left the home for some reason [pulled out] and no where to take them - like the middle of the night or waiting for foster care placements etc. Those kids are any age including teens with babies of their own [occasionally].

I agree that those kids didn't really seem to qualify for a place like that though. Most of them have sexual and behavioral issues and those kids certainly didn't display any of those characteristics. I could see them in some kind of large foster home - where they take in a large number of kids [Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy runs a number of them - long term foster care homes called Winshape Homes - with a couple of house parents [2-3 couples iirc] in each of them] - something like that but not like what the Beckworth School seemed to be...

Carol