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| Gina Hanu in
Romania Adopted daughter of Jean. She wears pants that say "To Run" even though her leg is stiff from polio. She is abandoned at birth by a divorced mother. |
Monica Raducanu
in Romania Second adopted daughter of Jean. She wears a shirt with Bugs Bunny on the front. She is also abandoned at birth. Her Gypsy family is large and they live in extreme poverty. Monica is the youngest and the only one institutionalized. |
Poverty takes its toll on the community. " Healthy communities tend to produce healthy people. Distressed and depressed communities tend to produce distressed and depressed people " (Homan, 1999, p. 28). The family is affected and is often torn apart. Family friendly services are of the utmost importance in these circumstances. Helping the family to remain intact is vital for a healthy community.
A family living in poverty that has disabled children often encounters difficulties. They are faced with the difficult decision of giving the child up to the state in order for them to get the services that they need. It is ironic that children with emotional and behavioral disabilities that are in foster or adoptive families are recognized as needing assistance and they receive this assistance from the state. However, those same services are not available to the parents to assist them in keeping their children at home (Cohen & Cohen, 2000, p. 226).
In other countries the same thing can happen to children. Other factors that are involved in the abandonment of children are culture, ideologies, and political structure. Many children are abandoned to state run orphanages because of poverty, disabilities, breakdown of the family, or sex of the child.
Poverty not only takes its toll on the community it takes its toll on the world. We are different yet not so different when it comes to our children. Young people overseas with the help of new technology share music, television sitcoms, and wear the same types of clothes. The contradictions are seen in pictures of children in other countries. Torn and faded T-shirts bearing Western logos and images of movie icons are seen on the youth involved in war and on refugees. They tell us about a world that has become a global village (Hesselbein et al., 1998, pp. 243-244). Perhaps the United States can share the message of our strengths with one of them being family friendly services. In an ideal world all children will receive services with no one being left out.