“Adoption is not a simple matter. It is easier said than done,” Joseph Pang, who founded the House of Love (HoL) orphanage, told FMT.

According to Pang, many factors can affect the adoption process, especially the age of the child in question.

“It is easier to adopt a newborn baby than it is to adopt children aged two years and above,” he said.

This is also because children above the age of two tend to carry emotional baggage due to the trauma experienced before they are left at the orphanage.

Such trauma makes it challenging for the child’s adoptive parents, he said.

Pang denied that orphanages are afraid they will not have enough children to maintain the institutions if they give them up for adoption.

“It is unfair for them to say so because the main reason we take in the children is because they need help,” he said.

“Now tell me, where else can they go?”

In most cases, he said, children at his orphanage are brought in by single parents, many of whom have difficulty providing for them.

“These single parents need our help. They have to work and they still have to take care of their children.

“What we do is, we lessen their burden and provide them with a place for the children to stay and be well taken care of.”

Pang added that he couldn’t arrange for the children to be adopted even if he wanted to as they are still bound to the existing parent.

In some cases, he said, parents would take back their children once they became financially stable.

He did not deny the possibility of unauthorised orphan homes taking advantage of children, but pointed out that many others are working to serve their purpose in the community.

Pang’s orphanage centre, HoL, was established in 2013 and currently houses 37 children between the ages of four and 18.

On Aug 9, baby hatch centre OrphanCare claimed some orphanages were afraid to cooperate in finding homes for foundlings “for fear of losing children” and being forced to shut down.

Its chairman Faizah Mohd Tahir, said every child needs to belong to a family, and urged more orphanages to help facilitate the adoption process for these children.

She claimed there were at least 11 baby hatch centres in Malaysia but that only a handful of orphanages worked with them to help abandoned children find proper homes and families.

She added that the children currently residing in orphanages throughout the country could receive better care if they were taken out of these institutions.