THE LOSS of parental care is a growing issue both locally and worldwide, and of primary importance is the recognition of the significant impacts as well as the causes of this growing phenomenon.
Ms. Omattie Madray, Country Director of ChildLinK, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) previously known as Every Child Guyana that last week went independent of its United Kingdom (UK) parent NGO, said the primary causes are violence and family breakdown.
“Children are growing up without parental care mainly as a result of violence and family breakdown. There are other contributing factors which include migration and HIV/AIDS,” she said, in speaking to the Guyana Chronicle.
Madray pointed out that in Guyana there are over 600 children living in more that 20 children’s institutions/orphanages because they have been violated or because violence led to the disintegration of their families.
In this light, she lauded the programmers being run by the government of Guyana in partnership with organisations like hers.
“The Guyana programme over the past three years has developed stronger initiatives to stop violence against children, strengthening their existing mechanisms at government and non-government level as well as community based initiatives,” Madray said.
Acknowledging the severity of this problem and it impact in both the short term and long term, Madray said ChildLinK is committed to working in collaborating with stakeholders to deliver quality services to children.
In an invited comment, Child Protection and Training Coordinator with ChildLinK, Ms. Erania Yaw, said the organisation’s work targets care givers with information to address the main causes of loss of parental care.
“We feel that if there are stronger relationships with children and their parents; where there is no violence and where parents look to alternative methods of discipline then the child would be in a safer place…There will not be the whole lack of parental care,” Yaw said.
According to her over the years the NGO has been hosting workshops in communities to reiterate this and advance a more positive approach to addressing issues affecting children.
Relative to the impact of the loss of parental care, Yaw said, “If we look at the street children phenomenon and listen to their stories one would understand…If we have children without parental care then we have children who will be vulnerable to a number of issues.”
Awareness
She reiterated that awareness is a must in the effort to address loss of parental care.
At the launch of ChildLinK the Every Child UK Chief Executive, Ms. Anna Feuchtwang, agreed and said raising the awareness level is one of several efforts that must be undertaken.
The others, she said, includes government plans to focus on alternative family based care for children.
Guyana has made progress in their area with its Foster Care programme and with a budgetary allocation of $20M this year; approximately 100 children are expected to be fostered as the programme advances.
Feuchtwang said, “This is a growing issue. There are at least 24 million children worldwide who do not have parental care.”
She added that this estimate is conservative but noted that it represents approximately one per cent of the world’s children.
According to her children, in sharing their insights, demonstrate a great deal of understanding and awareness of the issues that affect their lives.
“One child from Guyana said ‘Parents are poor. They leave their children in orphanages because they cannot afford it’,” Feuchtwang said.
This information, she noted, was garnered when a research and policy document on children without parental care was launched last year to coincide with the anniversary of the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).
“Children without parental care are living in residential homes sometimes…Even though most of them have parents they are living on the streets in many of the world’s cities; they are domestic servants or in the sex industry; they are in prisons; they are in extended families and some of them are looking after themselves in child-headed households,” she said.
Feuchtwang made clear that the growing number of children without parental are has worrying implications for efforts to achieve the rights outlined in the UNCRC, to which Guyana is a signatory.
A loss of parental care threatens children’s rights to survive; to be free from violence, abuse and exploitation; to grow up in a supportive family environment; to develop and; learn to participate in decisions that affect their lives.
Feuchtwang asserted that a loss of parental care has a devastating impact on children’s physical, psychological and social development as well as their sense of identity.