Indonesia’s Orphanage Trade: Islamic Philanthropy’s Good Intentions, Some Not So Good Outcomes

Abstract

In 2011, Indonesia commenced an orphanage deinstitutionalization strategy known as the paradigm change in child protection. The strategy responded to human rights protocols emphasizing institutional care of children as a last resort. Orphanage based social workers were trained by the Ministry of Social Affairs (MOSA) to implement the paradigm change, increase parenting capacity and strengthen local supports to enable children’s reunification with their families. The paradigm change intended to reduce children coming into institutional care; however, we found a persistent growth of non-orphaned children being recruited to orphanages since 2011 and more orphanages being built to accommodate them. Islamic philanthropic activities were identified as supporting and contributing growth to the orphanage trade. Despite the paradigm change, social workers were financially incentivization to recruit children to orphanages. There were no similar incentives to deinstitutionalize them. This paper uses selective quotes from the larger study, of social workers interviewed, to assist with theorizing the high potential of Islamic philanthropy in supporting Indonesia’s growing orphan trade. We propose that philanthropy, including where there are good faith and good intentions, may be contributing to some not so good outcomes, including trafficking and modern-day slavery.

Incentive-based Social Welfare Administration in Indonesia: Implications for sustainable development in women’s and children’s protection

“…The civil service pay structure incentivised outreach recruitment missions focused on bringing children from families in poverty into care, as opposed to remunerating work towards the Paradigm Change. As in other research (Isimoya et al, 2018;Kang and Shen, 2017;McLaren and Qonita, 2020;Wang et al, 2018), incentive pay was found to motivate individuals to prioritise work on the basis of effort versus outcomes for them. Incentivisation in social work and administration presents risks to social justice and fairness, especially when (1) incentivisation is misaligned with welfare priorities or change agendas, and (2) when earning incentives are prioritised over value-based social work (Austin, 2013;Loyalka et al, 2019;Santibañez, 2020).…”

“…The low base pay of social workers in Indonesia is influential in sustaining administrative prioritising based on the monetary rewards attached (McLaren and Qonita, 2020). Since the introduction of the Paradigm Change, incentivisation has not been applied to the wages of civil service orphanage-based social workers to prioritise the deinstitutionalisation of children, reunification, home visits and strengthening communities.…”

“…Designed by the Ministry of Social Affairs (MOSA), with Save the Children and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the Paradigm Change aimed to shift Indonesia's system of institutional care towards family and community care; or, at least, home-like institutional care with regular family and community contact (McLaren and Qonita, 2020). This is consistent with children's rights (Ariyadasa et al, 2017).…”

“…In the business sector, incentive pay is often argued as beneficial for motivating individuals and rewarding organisational profits (Isimoya et al, 2018; Kang and Shen, 2017; McLaren and Qonita, 2020; Wang et al, 2018). Educational research also reports correlations between incentivisation and outcomes based on teacher performance and student’s results (Chelwa et al, 2019; Muralidharan and Sundararaman, 2011).…”

Respect for Religiosity: Review of Faith Integration in Health and Wellbeing Interventions with Muslim Minorities

“…In Muslim families and communities, connection to religion is important, but the complexities of multicultural relations can present challenges for health and welfare providers, and for Muslim-minorities (Amri and Bemak 2013;McLaren and Patil 2016;McLaren and Qonita 2020;Patil and McLaren 2019;Salma and Salami 2020). Several authors have attempted to unpack this complexity and its associations with lived experiences, such as of isolation and loneliness (Nagle 2016;Parati 2017), mental and physical ill-health (Koerner and Pillay 2020;McCoy et al 2016), and with general wellbeing or quality of life (Colic-Peisker 2009;Gardner et al 2014).…”