Would You Want Your Child Taken to a Group Home or Orphanage If You Passed?

Group home, good or bad?

What if today were your last day on earth? What if tomorrow, your child woke up in a world where you no longer existed? Now pause. Would you want your child, your baby, your joy, to be sent to a group home?

This question is not just hypothetical. It is the painful reality for thousands of children around the world whose parents die, are incarcerated, or fall into crisis. And in the absence of strong family support, these children often end up in systems that cannot hold their hearts the way family can.

Would a group of rotating staff, however kind, be able to understand your child’s bedtime rituals?
Would they know her favourite lullaby, or the reason he gets scared in the dark?
Would they care for your child the way you would?

We must ask ourselves these hard questions, not out of guilt or blame, but out of love. Because if we would not want this for our own children, then we must not settle for it for any child.

The Truth About Group Care

Group homes and orphanages were never meant to raise children.
They were meant to be temporary.
They can never replace the warmth of a grandmother’s hug, the guidance of an uncle, or the safety of a familiar home.

Too often, children in these systems experience disconnection, identity loss, trauma, and developmental delays. The system is full of dedicated workers doing their best, but the system itself needs to change.

There Is Another Way

We can shift our approach from rescuing children to strengthening families.
We can invest in kinship care, community support, mental health services, and economic empowerment for vulnerable parents.
We can build a system where a child’s village is supported—not separated.

Family is not perfect. But family, when equipped and empowered, is almost always better.

What You Can Do
• Advocate for policies that prioritize family-based care and kinship placements.
• Support nonprofits that reunify and strengthen families, rather than building more institutions.
• Mentor, foster, give, volunteer, because sometimes a child just needs one adult to fight for their right to belong.

Let us build a world where, even if tragedy strikes, children do not lose everything.
Where they are not institutionalized, but embraced.
Not warehoused, but welcomed home.

Because if we would not want our own child placed in a group home…
Why should any child have to?