Field Visit Report



	Report of the Field Visit to Yichun Orphanage April 9, 2002 by Dr. Peggy Gurrad

		We visited the Yichun orphanage on Monday afternoon, April 8, 2002. I asked about other Yichun orphanages, since some adopted kids in the past had the surname Yuan and others were named Yi. The director said that there used to be another building in the city - sort of a branch office where there were infants but no older children or elderly.


	The children with the surname of Yuan came from there although their files were at the main orphanage. He said the city of Yichun was called Yuanzhou in the past.


	We first visited the infant building, which was to the left. One of our Grannies, Li Xiu Ying works with the infants. At the time there was one other orphanage staff person working in the room and there were 7 babies. We saw the cribs that we had provided. We are not currently sponsoring any foster care at this orphanage but they do have 40 children in foster care (mostly healthy infants). The babies at the orphanage were quite young so it looks like the youngest babies are cared for at the orphanage and then move fairly quickly to foster care.

We then went to the large building on the right where the older and/or handicapped children are.

Most are not able to go to school due to lower IQ’s so our Hugging Granny, Yi Bin Ying (right), lives here with them in this set of rooms and teaches them.

She is a retired primary school teacher.


	When we visited they were all sitting quietly with a small desk in front of them, several were writing characters in an exercise book. We gave them each a pencil and pen and some small candies. One of the Amity staff had seen them a few weeks before and was surprised at how quiet they were since they’d been quite active at her last visit. Finally she said something to the Granny who told the kids they could get up and play and they were very happy! They all went outside on the grass and played games with the Granny.

There were about three sleeping rooms off this central room, I think each had two or three twin beds. And there was an eating room. We saw the cabinet in this room that we had provided for their tableware and in one of the sleeping rooms was the cabinet for their clothes that we had sent funds for. The orphanage director mentioned that they would like some desks and chairs for these kids, which seems reasonable when you see what they were using as desks.


	Next we visited the infant rooms. There was a central room with three sleeping rooms coming off of it. There are cribs in all three sleeping rooms but a bed for a caregiver in only one of them. There were about 10 infants or toddlers there that day and they have one caregiver. Two caregivers work in shifts to cover the 24 hours. Dr. Hong recommended having someone else help with some of the chores such as washing diapers, etc. because the caregiver needs more time to play with the children. The children were up in walkers in the central area with some room to move about in them. A few of the toddlers were walking. But there were no toys out.


	We then walked to the end of this building and went back along the end on the ground floor to their medical clinic. We had sent funds in 2000 for them to purchase some basic medical equipment for this clinic. As we were leaving we passed a foster mom and her baby, on the way to the clinic to be checked by the orphanage doctor.