Psychosocial Support For Orphans And Vulnerable Children The Case Of Three Center In Woliso, Oromia

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.