Abstract:
Now a day the situation of orphan and vulnerable children in sub-Saharan Africa is
terrible as compared to Europe. This situation causes millions of deaths in the region.
The challenges in most cases results to poor standard of living of orphans and vulnerable
children and ultimately leads of children’s death. The main objective of the study was to
assess psychosocial support for orphan and vulnerable children in the three selected
orphanage centers in Woliso town. The study adopted cross sectional descriptive survey
research design mixed approach the target population 325 from this with the sample size of
176 is analyzed. In selecting participants, a technique of simple random sampling was
used. To collect data three designed tools; questionnaires, interviews and focus group
discussion were used. In the data collection 176 orphan and vulnerable children and 10
care givers were selected by random sampling procedure from the three orphanages.
The data was analyzed by both descriptive (mean, standard deviation, percentage) and
one way ANOVA. The major findings of the study related to the psychological and social
consequences for orphan and vulnerable children are shortages of materials, crowd-ness,
scarcity of material service, medication, basic needs, limited social life, communication
and inadequate or absence of psychosocial services which result for the development of
psychosocial problems in orphanages. The study also identified that the care givers lack
skills on working with orphan and vulnerable children. Further study revealed
statistically significant mean difference between the selected sites. However, there was no
statistically significant mean difference. Finally, the researcher will give an insight for
policy makers, child care program designers and service providers to plan and
implement standardized services to improve lives of orphan and vulnerable children.
