Lumos (charity)

Founder

Lumos was founded by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling in 2005.

Neil Blair is the Chair of the Board of Trustees, who include: Kazem Behbehani (to December 2014), Lucy Smith, Rachel Wilson, Sandy Loder, Rita Dattani, Nick Crichton, Danny Cohen and Mark Smith.^[1]

What they do

Lumos is an international non-governmental charity organisation (NGO). It is registered in England and Wales as charity number 1112575.^[2] Lumos gathered 80 years of research proving that it is essential for a child's normal development to have a family and to have sustained one-on-one loving care. There are an estimated eight million children that are currently institutionalized worldwide and 80% of them aren't orphans. Lumos is dedicated to transform the lives of those eight million of disadvantaged children who live in institutions and so-called orphanages around the world.^[3]Although low estimates indicate that anywhere between 2 and 8 million children are in institutional care, J.K. Rowling said in a conversation with Lauren Laverne that there are at least 8 million and that is only the children that were officially registered in the institutions. She also mentioned that children who are raised in institutions often suffer developmental delays, stunted growth, psychological trauma.

Lumos uses the phrase ‘so-called’ when referring to orphanages because the vast majority of children are not orphans but are in institutions because their parents face extreme poverty; when children have physical or intellectual disabilities and their parents cannot afford treatment; or because they are from a socially excluded group. When parents are not supported in the community, these factors often lead to the break-up of families. Parents who can’t afford to feed, clothe or send a child to school are given little choice. Poverty is recognized as the main driver of child institutionalization in most countries.

• (a)52% of children in institutions in Sierra Leone were there due to poverty.
• (b)74% of children in a sample study in Moldova were placed due to poverty.
• (c)In a study of maternity hospitals in Europe, staff in 75% of hospitals stated poverty as a possible cause of abandonment.
• (d)Over 40% of children in institutions in North East Sri Lanka were placed due to poverty.
• (e)Hospital staff at times encourage parents to give up babies. Parents can’t afford time or specialist carers to look after their child. There is no inclusive education so a residential school far from home is the only option. Children with disabilities are viewed as a problem to be dealt with away from mainstream society. In some African countries they are considered unlucky or cursed.
• (f)45% of children in Russian institutions have a disability.
• (g)In Europe, Roma children with no disabilities are often incorrectly placed in remedial ‘special schools’ for mentally disabled children, according to a European Commission report. (h)90% of the 11 million ‘abandoned or orphaned’ childrenin India are girls. ^[4]

More than 80 years of research has shown that, despite the best intentions of many people who support and work in them, institutions harm the health and development of children.^[5] Separating children from their parents and placing them in large residential institutions deprives them of the love, care, and consistent caregiver engagement they need to grow, prosper, and to reach their full potential – physically, intellectually, and emotionally. Research suggests that children with intellectual disabilities can be particularly at risk of failing to thrive – to the extent of malnutrition and death – through a lack of sustained, specialist care and engagement. Life outcomes for institutionalized children are often poor.^[6] One study found that young adults raised in institutions are 6 times more likely to have been abused, 10 times more likely to be involved in prostitution, 40 times more likely to have a criminal record, and 500 times more likely to take their own lives than their peers.^[7] Lumos’ ambition is that by 2015, they will have ended institutionalization globally.

History

In 2004, after seeing an article in The Sunday Times about children being kept in caged beds in institutions, J.K. Rowling felt compelled to address what she saw as a terrible problem. As a result, she founded the charity that became Lumos. She said: "I looked at that photograph of the boy in his cage bed and felt he had absolutely no voice. This touched me as nothing else had because I can think of nobody more powerless than a child, perhaps, with a mental or a physical disability, locked away from their family. It was a very shocking realization to me and that's where the whole thing started."

As a result, she co-founded the Children’s High Level Group with Emma Nicholson to address the problem of institutionalized and disadvantaged children in Eastern Europe. In January 2010, Emma Nicholson resigned as Co-Chair of the board of the English charity. She continues as Chair of the Romanian charity (the Asociatia Children’s High Level Group), in which capacity she is furthering the work she began there and directing its resources to existing and new projects.

In 2010, Lumos was launched. The name Lumos comes from a light-giving spell in the Harry Potter books. Lumos began its work by focusing on countries in Central and Eastern Europe, where there has been a culture – a legacy of the former Soviet communist system – of placing vulnerable children in institutions, rather than supporting families to stay together with quality health, education, and social services in the community.

Lumos and other organizations have worked to encourage the European Commission to establish regulations that state that fundings to EU Member States must, from 2014, be used for community services, not to build or renovate residential institutions. Even before the regulations were passed, as a result of years of advocacy and awareness-raising, this principle of funding supporting ‘deinstitutionalization’ (DI) had already helped divert more than €367 million of EU funding away from institutions towards community services.^[8]

Lumos now works on a global scale – particularly promoting family-based care alternatives and helping authorities to reform their systems and close down institutions and orphanages. It is a key member of the Global Alliance for Children – an international grouping of governmental agencies, private foundations and NGOs – which is dedicated to improving the lives of children in adversity and to ensuring that all children reach their full potential.

According to a conversation between Lauren Laverne and J.K. Rowling, as of 2016, Lumos has put more than 17,000 children out of institutions. They have set up high quality foster care, small group homes where children live in a family-type situation, and found adoptive parents in the child’s community so that they receive that one-on-one loving care they need. Lumos has prevented 15,000 children to go into institutions. And they are working in more and more countries as they go.

Collaborations

Lumos collaborates with governments at all levels (professionals, carers, and other NGOs), faith-based groups, as well as communities, families, and children to help transform outdated systems that arbitrarily separate children from their families. It shares expertise and experience and organizes training in the skills needed to run family-focused, community-based care systems. In particular, it emphasizes the importance of demonstration projects in areas or regions to prove that deinstitutionalization – a complex set of challenges – can be achieved in practice.

Lumos has teams in countries including Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine. As part of its global focus on children in institutions, it has also opened a US office and is currently scoping work in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Events

In 2007, J.K. Rowling auctioned a copy of one of the seven special editions of her book, The Tales of Beedle the Bard, which raised £1.95 million for Lumos. In December 2008, the book was widely published in aid of the charity and became the fastest-selling book of that year.

In 2016, Lumos organized the "We are Lumos" worldwide campaign. They sold ‘We do not need magic to transform our world; we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already’ T-shirts, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child books, and tickets to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

Where and Why

Lumos is needed anywhere that has been a victim of a natural disaster and everywhere there is poverty. They cannot dismantle the system because it takes a lot of money to retrain workers in these institutions so that they can do community-based care (health nurse or work in a day-care centre) and build a better system.

Lumos isn’t trying to take the livelihood of the people working in orphanages away, but to show them how they can make this work for the children and for themselves. Lumos also works with government to make sure that once the institutions are closed they cannot re-open.

Quote

“If we change minds we will change lives. The re-education itself will stop [the orphanage system] going forward.” – J.K. Rowling

References

External links

• Official website
• Lumos on Twitter
  
• Lumos on Facebook