Prof documents how world helps orphans

The professor of social work has teamed with officials in other countries to help orphans.
CLEVELAND (AP) -- A professor who researches care for orphans around the world likes to stay with families who take children into their homes to get a first-hand view of their experiences.
Victor Groza of Case Western Reserve University said he tries to learn about the culture of countries in which he's working.
But when it comes to core values involving children, "There is so much similarity. We all want the same things. It's kind of amazing how alike we all are," Groza said.
During the last 15 years, the professor of social work has teamed with officials in other countries to move orphaned or abandoned children from government institutions to foster or adoptive families.
"There's no such thing as a good institution," says Groza, who has worked most extensively in Romania and is now consulting in Ukraine. "Kids need a family."
His paternal grandparents were Romanian immigrants, so Groza felt a calling to be a volunteer in 1991 after the world learned of the tens of thousands of Romanian children held in barely habitable institutions under dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
Groza said his first visit to those institutions was "the most profound and disturbing experience of my life. It changed my life."
Detailed conditions
In a book he co-wrote, "A Peacock or a Crow?" Groza detailed conditions his team found -- children suffering from a lack of food, medical care, sanitation, toys or attention from the institution's staff. There was a 5-year-old boy who had never been out of his own room.
Now Groza likes to talk about how far Romania has come in encouraging family-based care, with peasants in farming villages opening their homes to disabled children and hundreds of volunteers committed to children's welfare.
"I work with great humanitarians all around the world," he said.
Although one of his four siblings was adopted, Groza said his interest in adoption issues developed while he was a graduate student at the University of Oklahoma and supplemented his income by doing home studies for adopting families.
He also taught at the University of Iowa and has been at Case since 1993. Sometimes, students accompany him on his trips abroad.
Groza's work centers on helping to develop policies and systems that will allow the host countries to replace their institutions with domestic adoption or foster care. International adoptions play only a small part in providing homes for institutionalized children, he said.