All My Children

When parents have an inner spontaneous empathy with the very special meaning play has for their child, this in itself does a great deal for the child and their relationship, even if the adults spend only limited amounts of time in play. What he needs most is their emotional commitment to the importance of his play, so that it can be fully significant to him. His frequent demand that we play with him represents his effort to gain, from our active participation, a sense that what he does is also important to us. If he gets this emotional message—if our conscious and unconscious interest in and respect for his play quiets his conscious doubts about it—the child will need less of our participation to remain convinced that we truly believe his activity is important. Continue Reading »

These factors, although given in summary form, are also found elsewhere, for example, the Philippines. Bearing in mind the comments of Vanistendael that the phenomenon of street children is not due to any single factor, but to a combination of elements and influences, let us look at some of the other factors in our South African situation which contribute to the phenomenon of street children. The list is not exhaustive in any way: Continue Reading »

Transition homes in the community

This is an area where it is extremely difficult to succeed. Because of the stigma attached to the street children, people in the community generally fear to accommodate them in their own homes. There is a tremendous need to educate the community in this regard; already the project held its first seminar in the township to make people aware of the street children’s plight and of its difficulties in finding transition homes, before the children can return to their own families. The project has also approached the churches for transition homes, but failed to obtain a positive response! As a result, it applied to the local township council and was given a piece of land to erect a transition home but funds are needed to build such a home to accommodate the children. Continue Reading »

• Parentless children: Again, following a divorce, children may find themselves in a catch-22 situation where they feel unwanted by both their new stepfather and their new stepmother. This seems to affect the boys especially who tend to be far more rebellious than girls. For a time, boys may move between the two new ’sets of parents‘ without ever settling down, until the day comes when they feel unwanted by both ’sets’ and decide to make it on their own on the street by leaving their families.

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The Cotonou Seminar pointed out that ‘among the reasons most often heard from street children, that of the family was the most common to explain their departure from home‘. The immediate causes given by the Philippines on why there are street children all have to do with the family. Vanistendael also said the same: ‘the immediate cause is nearly always a dysfunctioning in the family‘. ‘The reasons why children take to the streets are complex and manifold. Broadly speaking, a distinction can be drawn between the push and pull factors. Continue Reading »

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;

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Getting organized in a town

As contact is being made with the children by the street animator, three to four committed people willing to get something off the ground need to get together. Their first step is to identify the possible resources within the community and to communicate with these people and organisations with a view to calling a first meeting of concerned citizens. It should be made clear that the meeting is exploratory and that people do not commit themselves in any way by attending. Such resources could include the following:

• Child Welfare in the town and township;
• Two priests/ministers of religion (preferably belonging to a ministers’ fraternal) one in the town and the other in the township;
• A lower and higher primary school principal/teacher in the township;

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Getting started in a town

To state the obvious, one needs to identify the whereabouts of street children in a town and to try and establish how many there are. The usual places to find them during the day are the supermarkets where they will volunteer to push trolleys, the taxi ranks where they will wash taxis, parking areas where they will offer to wash cars, etc. It is important to remember the five `categories’ because, for instance, although part-time working children are street children, their situation differs from runaways or abandoned children. Part- time working children who attend school and sleep at home in the evenings are not a ‘problem’ as such, although care needs to be taken that they do not become full-time working children or runaways. Continue Reading »

The brief overview of the projects caring for street children in the cities may have made some of us living in the towns rather envious! How fortunate city people are to have so many human resources at their disposal: social workers, psychologists, child care workers, as well as various supporting agencies such as drug counselling centres, etc, to come to their assistance. While this is indeed the case, it is important to bear in mind that street children projects in the cities also have difficulties that are not found in the towns. For instance: Continue Reading »

Contrary to adult fears—the usual motive for many parents to supervise and regulate their children’s games—even aggressive play in childhood serves often crucial civilizing functions. This is true if children are left to their own devices, in which case it only very rarely leads to mishap. Iona and Peter Opie, to whom we owe the most sensitive and comprehensive study of the games modern British children play on their own and under supervision by adults, write: Continue Reading »