Baby Elephant Orphanage Institution, Kenya

Such practices are assumed to be quite rare in the modern Western world, thanks to improved social security such as the Social Security Act which allowed Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) to be passed. This marked a change in social attitudes. This lack of social security and failure to develop alternative ways to support vulnerable families is the key reason that orphanages remain in many other countries.
The deinstitutionalisation programme sped up in the 1950s, after a series of scandals involving the coercion of birth parents and abuse of orphans (notably at Georgia Tann's Tennessee Children's Home Society), the United States and other countries have moved to de-institutionalize the care of vulnerable children—that is, close down orphanages in favor of foster care and accelerated adoption. Moreover, as it is no longer common for birth parents in Western countries to give up their children, and as far fewer people die of diseases or violence while their children are still young, the need to operate large orphanages has decreased.
Major charities are increasingly focusing their efforts on the re-integration of orphans in order to keep them with their parents or extended family and communities. Orphanages are no longer common in the European community, and Romania in particular has struggled to reduce the visibility of its children's institutions to meet conditions of its entry into the European Union. In the United States, the largest remaining orphanage is the Bethesda Orphanage, founded in 1740 by George Whitefield.
In many works of fiction (notably Oliver Twist and Annie), the administrators of orphanages are depicted as cruel monsters. It is true that some orphanages are funded on a per child basis and there can be attempts made to encourage children from poor families to enter the orphanage which will provide food, clothing and an education but often lack the individual love required for full cognitive development.