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Understanding community responses to the situation of children affected by aids
Foster, Geoff
Foster, Geoff
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"Children suffer from the social, economic and psychological consequences of the epidemic several years prior to death of a parent, as they live with prolonged or recurrent parental illness (Foster & Germann, 2001; Gilborn et al, 2001). And in fact, some studies suggest that the severity of the epidemic s impact on a child may be greater before he or she is orphaned than it is in later years. Most children show psychological reactions to parental illness and death such as depression, guilt, anger and fear. Furthermore, the recurrent impact of AIDS at the household level can be associated with continuous traumatic stress syndrome and a second generation of problems such as alcohol and drug abuse, severe depression, violent behavior and suicide (Straker, 1992). The virulence of the epidemic also has significant consequences for some children who do not live in a domestic unit containing an affected parent. Extended families can be overburdened by the need to care for relatives suffering from AIDS. Better-off households may slip into poverty, and poor families can slide into destitution. This generalized decline in levels of living increases the vulnerability of children to a range of consequences including illiteracy, poverty, child labor, exploitation and unemployment. For this reason, reference will be made in the following pages both to orphans and to vulnerable children, including those with sick parents, the handicapped and the destitute. The extended family safety net African children live in both households and families : and though often used inter-changeably, these terms have significantly different meanings. A household can be defined as a group of people, living together, who are usually economically interdependent. Families in traditional societies typically involve a much larger network of connections among people, enveloping the household in relationships that include multiple generations, extend over a wide geographical area and are based upon reciprocal rights and duties. The term extended family places special emphasis on the role of relatives outside the household in providing economic and social support to survivors from AIDS-affected homes. The extended family has been and still is the traditional social security system. Its members have been responsible for the protection of the vulnerable, the care of the poor and sick, and the transmission of social values. When relatives die, the extended family support network ensures that children are cared for -- whether some of its members move into households to care for survivors, or whether orphans are moved out into one or more relatives’ households. In the past and still to a considerable extent today the sense of duty and responsibility of African extended families has been almost without limits. Even though a family may not have sufficient resources to care for existing members, orphans are taken in. This has been the basis for the assertion that. traditionally, "there is no such thing as an orphan in Africa" (Foster, 2000a)."(pg 4)
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2002-03
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With permission of the license/copyright holder