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Models of care for orphaned and separated children and upholding children’s rights: cross-sectional evidence from western Kenya
BACKGROUND: 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-Sahara...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4021203/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24685118 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-698X-14-9 |
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author | Embleton, Lonnie Ayuku, David Kamanda, Allan Atwoli, Lukoye Ayaya, Samuel Vreeman, Rachel Nyandiko, Winstone Gisore, Peter Koech, Julius Braitstein, Paula |
author_facet | Embleton, Lonnie Ayuku, David Kamanda, Allan Atwoli, Lukoye Ayaya, Samuel Vreeman, Rachel Nyandiko, Winstone Gisore, Peter Koech, Julius Braitstein, Paula |
author_sort | Embleton, Lonnie |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: 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 ≤18 year. This descriptive analysis was restricted to baseline data. 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. 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 < 0.0001) more likely to have their basic material needs met in comparison to those in family-based care (17%) and institutions were better able to provide an adequate standard of living. 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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4021203 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-40212032014-05-16 Models of care for orphaned and separated children and upholding children’s rights: cross-sectional evidence from western Kenya Embleton, Lonnie Ayuku, David Kamanda, Allan Atwoli, Lukoye Ayaya, Samuel Vreeman, Rachel Nyandiko, Winstone Gisore, Peter Koech, Julius Braitstein, Paula BMC Int Health Hum Rights Research Article BACKGROUND: 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 ≤18 year. This descriptive analysis was restricted to baseline data. 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. 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 < 0.0001) more likely to have their basic material needs met in comparison to those in family-based care (17%) and institutions were better able to provide an adequate standard of living. 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. BioMed Central 2014-04-01 /pmc/articles/PMC4021203/ /pubmed/24685118 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-698X-14-9 Text en Copyright © 2014 Embleton et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Embleton, Lonnie Ayuku, David Kamanda, Allan Atwoli, Lukoye Ayaya, Samuel Vreeman, Rachel Nyandiko, Winstone Gisore, Peter Koech, Julius Braitstein, Paula Models of care for orphaned and separated children and upholding children’s rights: cross-sectional evidence from western Kenya |
title | Models of care for orphaned and separated children and upholding children’s rights: cross-sectional evidence from western Kenya |
title_full | Models of care for orphaned and separated children and upholding children’s rights: cross-sectional evidence from western Kenya |
title_fullStr | Models of care for orphaned and separated children and upholding children’s rights: cross-sectional evidence from western Kenya |
title_full_unstemmed | Models of care for orphaned and separated children and upholding children’s rights: cross-sectional evidence from western Kenya |
title_short | Models of care for orphaned and separated children and upholding children’s rights: cross-sectional evidence from western Kenya |
title_sort | models of care for orphaned and separated children and upholding children’s rights: cross-sectional evidence from western kenya |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4021203/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24685118 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-698X-14-9 |
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