Research was conducted in five Rift Valley towns in Kenya in 2011 to understand the link between emergencies, in particular Post Election Violence (PEV) and drought, and the perceived increase of children joining the streets. Findings show that food insecurity is one of the biggest factors that cause children to drop out of school and gravitate toward the streets to find food and earn money. Other major factors included the death of a caregiver, abuse at home, particularly when children are looked after by extended family, step parents or family friends, and being unable to go to school due to cost. Displacement as a result of Post-Election Violence was also a major factor with 37% of all children interviewed in the streets being internally displaced (IDPs).

Recommendations advocate for an urgent, large-scale response to place children currently connected to the streets in durable situations such as family reintegration or other forms of care, in tandem with a multi-sectorial development approach to tackle and prevent the crisis. More specifically pertaining to alternative care, these recommendations urge the Government of Kenya's Children's Department to expand alternative care options including alternative family-based care and independent or family-linked living for youth. The authors suggest that the Department rapidly scales up child reintegration and protection measures by conducting family tracing and arranging alternative care settings.

To read the full report, please visit: http://bettercarenetwork.org/BCN/details.asp?id=30092&themeID=1004&topicID=1027

Child Fostering in Senegal 

Child fostering is a widespread social practice in Africa, whereby parents send their biological children to live temporarily in another household. A nationally representative household survey conducted in 2006-2007, the survey Pauvreté et Structure Familiale, found that approximately 10% of children are fostered and 32% of households either send or receive foster children. Using data from the survey, this study aims at shedding light on this common practice (confiage) in three ways. First, the study examines the characteristics of households and individuals involved in fostering to better understand the motivation to foster. Second, the study examines the impact of fostering on host households and on sending households. Lastly, the study examines the impact of fostering on the foster child.

The paper examines three child outcomes: ever attending school, ever working, and completing more than 28 hours of domestic work per week. A large proportion of fostered children are in the care of their grandparents (25%), with almost equal numbers fostered with uncles and aunts (22%). Access to education is a major motivation for fostering a child, particularly boys, but girls were more likely to be fostered to respond to household demands for domestic work. Overall, however, the authors of the study did not uncover any evidence pointing to particularly negative outcomes for fostered children, be it compared to children in the households hosting them or in the households they left. The paper recommends policies that target households that need a lot of domestic work or policies that at least ensure that domestic work does not come at the expense of schooling will benefit fostered children.

To access the full report, please visit: http://bettercarenetwork.org/BCN/details.asp?id=30093&themeID=1002&topicID=1013

The Long-Term Impact of Child Fostering in Senegal 

In Senegal, about 14% of adults were fostered in their childhood. Using data from a nationally representative household survey conducted in Senegal in 2006-2007, the survey Pauvreté et Structure Familiale, this paper studies the long-term outcomes for adults who have been fostered in their childhood, including children fostered to Koranic schools . It focuses its analysis on education, first employment and current employment as well as on marriage. 

Ranging from no difference to clear improvement compared to non-fostered individuals, men always seem to gain from fostering through better education, better job market outcomes, and the possibility of marrying earlier. Women's trajectories were more diverse: those fostered in more traditional ways (fostered to the mother's kin group, to grandparents or at a young age) were likely to marry earlier and more often in a polygamous union than non-fostered women, but in less traditional cases (fostered to the father's kin group, to uncles and aunts, or older), women could gain (better education, less polygamy). The authors concluded that the long-term impacts of fostering are, therefore, heterogeneous and depend on the reasons, locations of fostering, host parents, fostering age, and gender.

To access the full report, please visit: http://bettercarenetwork.org/BCN/details.asp?id=30094&themeID=1002&topicID=1013

JOB POSTING

GENERAL INFORMATION

The newsletter participants, currently 3,156 in total, are working on issues related to the care and support of vulnerable children across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas.  The purpose of the newsletter is to enable members to exchange information on matters of mutual concern. If you would like to share a document, raise a specific issue, or reach out in any other way to the Network, please send the information to us at contact@bettercarenetwork.org.  In the interest of keeping messages consolidated, we will manage announcements on the newsletter and send out a few messages each month.

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