More kid-run households

23 July 2015 - 02:02 By Shaun Smillie

The number of households headed by children is increasing despite the roll-out of antiretroviral drugs. As many as 3 million children are believed to be living in such families in South Africa, but little is known about the emotional and psychological effect it has on them.To address this, researchers have over the past two years conducted studies on children in Orlando West in Soweto.Yesterday, the researchers from the University of Johannesburg presented their findings."The number of orphaned and vulnerable children is growing at an alarming rate and this is a social threat to the development of the country," said Professor Jace Pillay.The number was increasing despite the availability of ARVs, which Pillay said many HIV-positive people were not taking because of the stigma of Aids.An estimated 200 million children across Africa live in child-headed households. "These children are vulnerable from a material, social and psychological perspective," said Pillay.Two of the researchers studied the daily lives of boys and girls in such households.Linda Hage focused on a group of seven boys aged between 12 and 14. She found that they were regularly exposed to violence, but still valued education.Hage recommended that positive male role models help such children. She also said more needed to be done to understand the impact their experiences had on their psychological and educational development.Pillay said children in child-headed households tended not to disclose this, for fear of being victimised. Researcher Shirley Mogano gave one example, where a girl from a child-headed household pretended to her classmates that her mother was still alive.Mogano studied how children from child-headed households coped in school. She found that they had concentration difficulties, often because they arrived at school hungry.She suggested that schools introduce a breakfast feeding scheme, rather than just lunch.The children she studied also did not have adequate academic support at home.One of the aims of the programme is to produce a handbook that will help teachers and NGOs deal with the psychological, educational and emotional needs of children from such households...

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