Number of child-headed households on rise in SA

ACROSS South Africa, the number of child-headed households is increasing despite the rollout of antiretrovirals (ARVs).

But while there are believed to be as many as three million children living in such families within South Africa, little is known about their emotional and psychological experiences.

To address this, researchers have over the past two years been conducting a series of qualitative studies on children in Orlando West, in Soweto.

This week researchers from the University of Johannesburg presented their findings.

“The number of orphaned and vulnerable children is growing at an alarming rate and this is a social threat to the development of the country,” said Professor Jace Pillay of the South African National Research Foundation.

The number was increasing even with the availability of ARVs. The main reason for this was people were not taking ARVs because of the stigma attached to Aids.

The phenomena of child-headed households, he pointed out, wasn’t unique to South Africa – there were an estimated 200 million such children across Africa.

These children were vulnerable from “a material, social and psychological perspective”, he said.

Two of the researchers focused their study on the lives of boys and girls in such households. ed to be done to understand the impact their experiences had on their psychological and educational development.

Pillay said there was a tendency among child-headed households not to disclose they were living on their own, out of fear of being victimised.

Researcher Shirley Mogano gave one example where a girl from a child-headed household would pretend to her classmates her mother was still alive.

Mogano studied how such children coped in school. Out of her sample of 20 children, she found they had concentration difficulties, often because they arrived at school hungry.

To address this she suggested schools introduce a breakfast feeding scheme, rather than supplying lunch only. The children also did not have adequate academic support at home.

One of the aims of the research is to produce a handbook that will help teachers and NGOs deal with the psychological, educational and emotional demands of children from such households.