An Orphanage in Mexico: Four United Nations' Human Rights of Children and Wolins' Prerequisites for Efficient Group Care Through the View of the Manager and Staff

• Main Author: Quesnel Galván, Lucia Beatriz
• Format: Others
• Published: PDXScholar 2016
• Subjects: Children > Institutional care > Mexico; Orphanages > Employees > Attitudes; Orphans > Care > Mexico; Orphanages > Mexico; Children's rights; Human rights; Martin Wolins > Criticism and interpretation; Educational Leadership; Social Work
• Online Access: http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3311; http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4320&context=open_access_etds

In Mexico there are officially 1.8 million orphaned children, without counting non-orphaned children deprived of family, who also need care; of these, only 657,000 are living in 703 orphanages. Mexico's government invests less than 2% of its budget toward protection of children. There is a lack of substantive research or official assessment of orphanages. According to the scant research found, the children's human rights most frequently violated in Mexican orphanages are the rights to nutrition and health care, to be protected from further victimization, to free expression and participation, and to not be exploited. This study was carried out through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with the manager and five staff members of a respected orphanage in Mexico. It aimed to determine how they attempt to fulfill the aforementioned rights, and how their work relates to six prerequisites for efficient group-care formulated by Wolins after his vast research on the matter. Results indicate that the staff members of this orphanage view their work as spirituality in action, becoming the children's family, caring for their health through special vegetarian nutrition. They teach the children that they are the masters of their own lives and happiness, and not to see themselves as victims. From results I also suggest well supervised facilities, coupling between staff and professionals to screen children's health; a vegetarian diet based on scientific research; children's participation in rules, learning about, from and for their human rights and the idea of children being masters of their life and happiness.