Children on the streets of Ibadan, Nigeria: experiences, family dynamics and health status
| dc.contributor.author | Obimakinde, Abimbola Margaret | |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | Moosa, Shabir | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2024-12-10T07:39:29Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2024-12-10T07:39:29Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2023 | |
| dc.description | A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, to the Department of Family Medicine and Primary Care School of Clinical Medicine Faculty of Health Sciences University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa 2023 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Background This research explored the phenomenon of children-on-the-streets of Ibadan, Nigeria. These children are found on the streets without any adult supervision. They constitute the majority of street children but are linked to their families and therefore they come from and return home daily. The Bronfenbrenner ecological system theory on children’s development and interactions within contextual ecosystems, underpinned this study. This research aimed to understand the phenomenon of children on the streets of Ibadan, specifically their family dynamics, lived experiences, health, and needs. Method This was mixed-method research, although largely a qualitative approach was employed to obtain the narratives of children on the streets and significant adults in the children’s exosystem. All ethical principles were observed in the conduct of the studies. In-depth interviews, street photographs, field notes and observation were employed during the data collection, between June 2021 to September 2021. Fifty-three (53) participants including street shop owners, children on the street, Oyo State’s child welfare officers and parental figures were selected from a street in each of Ibadan's five urban Local Government Areas (LGAs). These LGAs include the Ido, Northwest (NW), Southwest (SW), North(N) and Northeast (NE). Relevant quantitative data was collected from the children only. The sampling of participants was initially purposive and subsequently by snowball technique. Framework analysis supported with Atlas Ti version 22, was conducted and the data was triangulated, for a robust understanding of the lived experiences, health, family dynamics and needs of children on the streets of Ibadan. Principal component analysis and frequencies were conducted with SPSS version 21 for the descriptive quantitative data obtained from the 21 recruited children, solely for thick description. The quantitative data included the Household Hunger Scale (HHS), Wealth Index (WI), and Body Mass Index (BMI). Results The participants comprised, 12 child welfare officers, 10 street shop-owners, 10 parental figures and 21 children on the street. The children were average 15.8 years old and had spent at least 4 years on the streets. The children had structurally defective families including broken large-sized families (18 of the 21 children were from families with > 4 children) with attendant poor socioeconomic resources and poor filial interpersonal relationships. More than half of the children were from families with poor WI scores. The lived experiences of children on the street included beneficial experiences related to the monetary gains on the streets with overwhelming challenging experiences. The challenging experiences included financial crisis, school failure, initiation into prostitution and street gangs, induction into substance use, harassment on the street, risk of kidnapping and ritual killing. The physical health problems of the children on the streets included poor nutrition, poor toilet habits, allergies, infectious diseases, and physical minor and major injuries (40% of them had evident facial or limb scars) sustained on the streets. Half of the children had a BMI in the “underweight” range and a third had HHS scores which indicated moderate household hunger. The mental health problems included sexual, verbal and substance abuse, although psychological strength was found in a few children on the street, more than half of the children responded “yes” to feelings of sadness or hopelessness. The children on the streets of Ibadan had many unmet needs due to governmental shortcomings including failure of the Oyo State’s education systems, inadequate vocational training programs for uneducable children, lax State child welfare laws, difficult rehabilitation of children on the street and poor policies on family size. There were bits of interventions which catered to children on the streets including parental poverty alleviation schemes and community-based child welfare alert programmes. Discussion The family dynamics driving child streetism for family-connected children in Ibadan are devaluation of family life, parental irresponsibility, and poor filial relationship, underscored by large family size, economic constraints and socio-cultural decadence. The family setting is that of broken homes with many children from a monogamous union or blended families with poor financial and social resources. The mothers were either in a monogamous unwedded union with “absent” fathers cohabiting with another woman. There was an economic-oriented filial relationship with the parentification of the children. The lived experiences of children on the street included beneficial experiences centred around monetary gains, overshadowed by challenging experiences. Monetary gains were meagre and predominantly through the hawking of edible produce. The challenging experiences included the loss or theft of money made on the streets by these children, school failure, initiation into prostitution and street gangs, induction into substance use, street harassment, risk of kidnapping and ritual killing. The physical health problems included poor carbohydrate-based diet with consequent undernutrition, open defecation with attendant health risks, predisposition to allergies, acquisition of infections including STIs, minor physical injuries and a few deaths from Road Traffic Accidents (RTAs). Sexual, verbal and substance abuse were common mental health problems, although few children acquired mental resilience. The governmental shortcoming which feds the epidemic of children on the street included the failure of the Oyo State’s education systems, inadequate vocational training programs for uneducable children, lax State child welfare laws, difficult rehabilitation of children on the street and poor policies on family size. The parental poverty alleviation scheme was one of the state’s government interventions, however, jurisdictional failure overshadows the efforts against child streetism in Ibadan. Conclusion The continuing influx of children on the streets of Ibadan is due to the peculiar family dynamics and the prevailing governmental jurisdictional failure. The presence of children on the street is fraught with a lot of difficult lived experiences and health problems. An appreciation of these factors, and synchronized targeted multi-level interventions within the ecosystems can positively influence measures to combat the epidemic of children on the streets of Ibadan, Oyo state, South- west Nigeria | |
| dc.description.submitter | MM2024 | |
| dc.faculty | Faculty of Health Sciences | |
| dc.identifier | https://orcid.org/ 0000-0001-5924-952X | |
| dc.identifier.citation | Obimakinde, Abimbola Margaret . (2023). Children on the streets of Ibadan, Nigeria: experiences, family dynamics and health status [PHD, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg]. WireDSpace.https://hdl.handle.net/10539/43226 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10539/43226 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.publisher | University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg | |
| dc.rights | © 2023 University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. | |
| dc.rights.holder | University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg | |
| dc.school | School of Clinical Medicine | |
| dc.subject | Streetism | |
| dc.subject | Lived | |
| dc.subject | Phenomenology | |
| dc.subject | Needs | |
| dc.subject | Hawk | |
| dc.subject | Relationship | |
| dc.subject | Welfare | |
| dc.subject | Rights | |
| dc.subject | UCTD | |
| dc.subject.other | SDG-3: Good health and well-being | |
| dc.title | Children on the streets of Ibadan, Nigeria: experiences, family dynamics and health status | |
| dc.type | Thesis |