Calvin Group Researches Child Welfare in China

Earlier this year, two Calvin professors, 18 students and two graduate students traveled to Henan, China to gather information at a child welfare institute in China about best practices for their care.

Thousands of orphans live in social welfare institutions in China.

The Calvin group did their research as part of a courses titled Adoption and Foster Care for Chinese Children with Special Needs.

With translation help from university students in China, the group was able to perform developmental assessments for over 230 children with special needs between the ages of one month and 14 years.

Under the guidance of child welfare advocate Xi Bing, they did the work with children and caregivers at the Zhengzhou Child Welfare Institute. They also worked with foster care families in neighboring communities.

While the research, once analyzed, will likely serve to document the merits of foster care, the class’s work also produces tangible benefits for the institutionalized children who participated, says Judith Vander Woude, program director of speech pathology at Calvin.

“We also trained their rehabilitation staff and provided suggestions for each child's caregiver,” Vander Woude explained.

Participants benefitted as well by walking alongside students and employees they met through their trip.

“Being able to have meaningful conversations with the Zhengzhou students who helped us about our faith and to also establish relationships with the persons who serve children with special needs in this province was incredible,” said Vander Woude.

The idea of making the research trip started a world away with Bing. Based in China, Bing works with Chinese children who have special needs. She is seeking to reform the Chinese orphanage and foster care systems.

Bing partners with a Bethany Christian Services, a Grand Rapids social services agency.

Vander Woude says she and Jill Bates, the pathology clinic director at Calvin, relied on Bing’s expertise and ongoing work in orphan care to coordinate their course,

After getting a crash course in Chinese culture in Beijing, Vander Woude and Bates and students traveled to China to do the research.

Vander Woude says she hopes to return within a year for further research on the children's development, comparing the differences between children in institutions and children in foster homes.

In late 2013, Vander Woude was named a lifetime fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, an honor bestowed for “outstanding contributions to the discipline of communication sciences and disorders.”