Education needed to start an Orphanage in China?

I would concur with the last poster that a joint MSW/JD would be your best bet. I would go further you want schools that focus on international issues. Monmouth in NJ has a great social development program in their MSW program. Unfortunately I don’t think they have a law school. You also want an MSW program that focuses on administration rather than clinical practice. You will need to focus on issues like staffing, fundraising, policy and related. elements. Many MSW programs have programs that will pay for your education if you do payback with child welfare (both adoption and foster care count).

You may find that developing a company in the US that works overseas with existing adoption agencies will be a better link.

DA

It is nice of you to be concerned, but there are some major problems with your plan. One thing is that the Chinese government is trying really hard to get more Chinese people to adopt the children in their orphanages, because they are embarrassed about the publicity that goes along with their children being adopted abroad. They are loosening up on the one-child policy and promoting adoption to the Chinese (I was just in China last month, and I saw this myself). If your specific goal is to get children adopted abroad, you are likely to run into major problems (last year they also tightened up the restrictions on which foreigners could adopt, because they really wanted to limit the process). I suspect that in 5-10 years, it will be very difficult for any American or Canadian to adopt from China.

Secondly, as much as China has opened up, it is still a Communist country. I don’t know this for sure, but I would guess that the orphanages in China are run by the government. They tend to put people who are politically in favor in charge of their organizations, and it seems unlikely that they would like someone to come from another country to do this.

Assuming you really want to run an orphanage for purposes of facilitating adoption somewhere, I would think that while social work would be the most usual background, another thing which would be enormously important would be international law. A school which offers a joint JD/MSW program, with an international emphasis (you really need to have a strong bicultural understanding) would be ideal.

1

Hello, I just seen your post and I am also interested in starting a Children’s Home in China. Have you been able to get one open?

How about a degree in child development/ Psychology