Sub-Saharan Africa is home to approximately 55 million orphaned children. The growing orphan crisis has overwhelmed many communities and has weakened the ability of extended families to meet traditional care-taking expectations.
Other models of care and support have emerged in sub-Saharan Africa to address the growing orphan crisis, yet there is a lack of information on these models available in the literature. We applied a human rights framework using the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to understand what extent children’s basic human rights were being upheld in institutional vs.
community- or family-based care settings in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya.
Methods:
The Orphaned and Separated Children’s Assessments Related to their Health and Well-Being Project is a 5-year cohort of orphaned children and adolescents aged
Chi-Square test was used to test for associations between categorical /dichotomous variables. Fisher’s exact test was also used if some cells had expected value of less than 5.
Results:
Included in this analysis are data from 300 households, 19 Charitable Children’s Institutions (CCIs) and 7 community-based organizations (CBO’s).
In total, 2871 children were enrolled and had baseline assessments done: 1390 in CCI’s and 1481 living in households in the community. We identified and described four broad models of care for orphaned and separated children, including: institutional care (sub-classified as ‘Pure CCI’for those only providing residential care, ‘CCI-Plus’for those providing both residential care and community-based supports to orphaned children , and ‘CCI-Shelter’which are rescue, detention, or other short-term residential support), family-based care, community-based care and self-care.
Children in institutional care (95%) were significantly (p
Conclusions:
Each model of care we identified has strengths and weaknesses. The orphan crisis in sub-Saharan Africa requires a diversity of care environments in order to meet the needs of children and uphold their rights.
Family-based care plays an essential role; however, households require increased support to adequately care for children.
Author: Lonnie EmbletonDavid AyukuAllan KamandaLukoye AtwoliSamuel AyayaRachel VreemanWinstone NyandikoPeter GisoreJulius KoechPaula Braitstein
Credits/Source: BMC International Health and Human Rights 2014, 14:9
Published on: 2014-04-01
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