AIDS and a New Generation of Orphans: Is There a Role for Group Care?

Abstract

SUMMARY The AIDS epidemic, now ending its second decade, has created challenges, controversy, and occasionally change. In the early years adults were the primary, and usually the only, focus of attention. Policies and practices affecting children were addressed primarily in relation to HIV-infected infants and young children. Their needs for medical care, foster homes, and nurturing were the focus of specially created private and public programs. Only in the past several years has the long-term impact of the AIDS epidemic on children and adolescents living with an HIV-infected parent or orphaned as a result of the parent's death come to public and professional attention. Like other aspects of the epidemic, questions about the care and custody of these vulnerable children and youth began to be addressed only after the problem had reached crisis proportions. Also like other aspects of the epidemic, these issues have created challenges, controversy, and occasionally change. This article introduces one subject that has to date received no sustained analysis: the potential role of group care options for children, youth, and families struggling with the impact of AIDS. This subject has been avoided by both child welfare specialists and AIDS service providers; one barrier to discussion has been history-or to be more precise, oversimplified history. To turn Santayana's well-known dictum on its head, in this case the fear of repeating the past has condemned us to fail to learn from it.