Provisioning of support to school-going teenagers placed in foster-care in Mpumalanga Province : a multidimensional wellness perspective

Abstract

The increase in orphaned and vulnerable children has led to the need for foster-care. In these settings, there are children from diverse backgrounds and diverse life experiences and circumstances. Foster-care aims at providing an appropriate family-like setting in which to care for young people who, for various reasons, cannot live with their own families or who live with their families but in an environment which is not homely. The focus in this study is on schoolgoing teenagers in foster-care. This study explores the ways in which such teenagers are supported and how their needs can be known and met. Foster-care is provided to school-going children with ages ranging 07 to 17. This study focused only on teenagers since they are at a crucial stage of growth. Most of these children in foster-care are orphaned and vulnerable are taken care of by foster-carers. However, the foster-carers lack training in supporting the teenagers holistically. The constructivist – interpretive paradigm was used in this study to understand the foster care phenomenon in context and explore the views of foster carers to teenagers’ total wellness. A concurrent mixed-methods approach was used to gather data that is, using the qualitative approach through the interviews, observation, and document analysis. Quantitative data was generated through a questionnaire. The sample consisted of three coordinators, thirty teenagers and thirty foster carers. Purposive sampling was used for the teenagers and the coordinators while stratified random sampling was also used to group the teenagers into strata and non-probability sampling was used for the foster-carers. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the coordinators and teenagers. Non-participant observation as well as document analysis were also used in the study. A questionnaire was given to the foster-carers. In analyzing the data, the interviews were coded to determine emerging themes. Relationships between the themes were identified. The data from the documents analyzed was categorized according to themes. Questionnaire responses were entered into the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and analyzed using this software with the support of a statistician. The findings of the study revealed that foster-carers are providing support to the teenagers and the teenagers are happy with the way their needs are being met which is made possible through collaboration with different stakeholders. However, there are some areas of support where fostercarers are experiencing challenges and need assistance to improve the support they offer the teenagers. Therefore, holistically improving support for foster-carers calls for a multidimensional approach. This means that society is responsible for the moral character it creates, and everyone in a community should be responsible for helping to train a child irrespective of who the parents are, offering correction where it is needed. This means that caregivers cannot carry out their task on their own: they need input and support from other stakeholders involved in the life of the child. The demographic information of participants indicated a limitation as all the coordinators were women. If men had been included, different information may have been obtained. As a recommendation from this study, there is a need to recruit more men as coordinators for the sake of the male children in foster-care. Moreover, in future, a study should be carried out on how to prepare the teenagers for life after foster-care using the multidimensional wellness framework. The development and implementation of a training programme for foster-carers could also be explored.