All My Children

Establishing a street children committee

Towards the end of the meeting of the community resources, it is important to ask those present to indicate whether or not they wish to commit themselves to becoming part and parcel of a proposed street children committee. It is important to indicate the implications of such a commitment which are, among others:

• to have regular meetings (possibly every two weeks), especially at first in order to get organised;
• to possibly become part and parcel of the care group to screen or assess the children;

• to get involved in fund-raising (whether it be money, food, second-hand clothing, etc);
• to provide after-care to the children re-integrated into their families;
• to attend to the other issues that may arise as the committee discusses the street children phenomenon.

There are people who are ‘anti-meetings’ and who will not want to become involved in any committee but who, on the other hand, will be willing to offer their services whenever requested to do so. Such people must not be forgotten. On the contrary, they should be invited to commit themselves on that basis. If well attended, this first meeting of community resources will help to bring awareness of the plight of street children to the community. Each group present should be asked to report back to their own constituencies as well. The first meeting of the street children committee should be called as soon as possible thereafter to elect its own executive and to get started timeously.

While the question of a written constitution will inevitably crop up, it is often better to remain without a constitution for a few months while the project gets off the ground. The initial meeting of community resources will enable those on the committee to clarify their goal, for instance, to re-integrate the children into their families as soon as possible. The way of achieving this goal will become evident as time goes by, and the drawing up of a constitution and action plan will thus be based on concrete experiences rather than speculating about a situation that is still rather vague.

Getting a ‘care group‘ operating

Usually two or three people are needed for a care group, namely, the street animator who will draw the children, a social worker and/or educationist and/or someone with a good understanding of children. Their task is to make a sociological evaluation (family background, reasons for leaving home, etc); a psychological assessment (how the child’s life on the street has affected him, concentration, traumas, etc); and an educational assessment (the level of education at which the child should be placed). A written report should then be drawn up about the child to assist the ’social worker’ when he/she visits the child’s family to assess whether the child can be re-integrated or not, or should be placed in alternative care (relatives or a temporary foster family or ultimately a children’s home).

At the beginning of a project, one does not usually have facilities to board and lodge the children and one has to resort to the home of a member of the community. It is preferable for the screening to take place at the home of either the street animator or the ‘interviewer’ because street children generally find it difficult to concentrate for a long period of time and thus the screening needs to take place at short intervals. Informal and formal discussions should occur during the day. Informal discussions enable one to pick up bits and pieces of useful information as the children talk. Formal discussions are usually conducted privately; they demand lots of listening and prompting and very little telling.

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