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There is limited evidence on family reintegration for children who have been in residential care within the African context. The goal of this study is to find out what factors impact reintegrated institutionalized children’s desire to remain with their biological parents or extended family. The dataset included records for 659 interviewed children and their guardians. However, the analyses were limited to 408 cases with complete data on the dependent and independent variables.
Most of the children in the study (73%) preferred to remain with their relatives. The age of the child, length of…
Deinstitutionalisation (DI) is essential for care reform for any country. The process of DI is implied in Ghana’s laws, policies, and guidelines on childcare. The absence of a DI practice model in Ghana contributes partly to the barriers to implementing the Care Reform Initiative (CRI). It is recorded in the mapping of Residential Homes for Children (RHC) in Ghana (2018), conducted by the Department of Social Welfare and UNICEF, that several closed homes reopen and operate because Social Welfare Officers (SWO) are unable to force closure without access to or knowledge of alternative care…
Abstract
The study aims to explore the experiences of Ghanaian care leavers to discern the factors that promote and impede their educational attainment. Data was collected from 23 care leavers using semi-structured interviews. The interviews were then analyzed using the framework method. The findings suggest that the personal motivation of the care leavers and encouragement from significant adults and peers facilitated their academic success. However, the participants identified stigma, lack of academic support, and the inability to participate in decisions as barriers to their education.…
This report explores children and young people’s views and experiences related to COVID-19 and its indirect impacts. Firstly, it looks at children and young people’s perceptions of how COVID-19 has had an impact on their lives and countries. Secondly, it seeks to highlight the ways in which they are working to help to stop the spread of the virus and lessen its impacts.
This research included individual and group interviews with 160 children and young people (80 girls and 80 boys) between the ages of of nine and 18 from eight countries across West Africa: Central…
There is a growing global consensus that isolated efforts to improve individual institutions will not solve the problems of children in residential care, or meet their best interests. Family-based care alternatives, namely kinship care and foster care, therefore need to be actively promoted and strengthened in Ghana so that children are only ever in residential care as a temporary last resort.
This document is aimed at complementing the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for…
The Building Positive Futures project was a pilot study that sought to test a range of quantitative and qualitative research tools for use in leaving care studies in Africa, including a peer research approach. As there have been few previous African studies on care leaving, the research team hoped to develop their understanding of how best to conduct cross-country…
Across Africa, there are many young people who do not live with their biological families and grow up in alternative care. Despite knowing that African young people who grow up in care can struggle as they move into adulthood, there is very little research on leaving care in African countries. To help increase understanding of careleaving in Africa, a group of researchers from Queen’s University Belfast in the UK, University of Johannesburg in South Africa, University of Ghana and Makerere University in Uganda came together to do this research. They tested a range of methods to find…
In collaboration with colleagues at Queen’s University Belfast in the UK, this feasibility study was undertaken by a team of academic researchers from the University of Johannesburg in South Africa, University of Ghana and Makerere University in Uganda, all of whom are members of the Africa Network of Care-leaving Researchers (ANCR).
Given the paucity of research on youth transitioning from alternative care (i.e. care-leaving or leaving care) in Africa, the study sought to develop and test a methodology for a cross-country, comparative study on leaving care in Africa. This involved the…
Abstract
International studies have suggested that parental loss is a risk factor for poor physical and mental health, but all orphans do not develop the same kind and intensity of wellbeing indicators. This disparity is associated with certain biopsychosocial characteristics of the developing orphan which may interact with certain environmental factors to determine the levels of vulnerability a child may experience following parental death. While studies have been devoted to orphanhood in Ghana, no study has examined the nature of multisystemic risks within the sociocultural environment,…
Abstract
Introduction
In most sub-Saharan African countries, studies on the impact of out-of-home care experience on the transition of young adults leaving care are limited to those leaving institutional or foster care with no empirical evidence on the experiences of those moving out of kinship care. This study reports findings from interviews with young adults with experience of kinship care in Ghana, about what lessons their kinship care experiences provided in their transition to adulthood.
Method
Twenty-five young adults aged 21–25 years (17 males, 8 females) with kinship care…