Street Children Case Study

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2.3.6 Seeking a better life Wargan and Dreshem (2009) explain that in escaping dire conditions at home, children try to find ways to make their own living outside of their households and spend earned money on personal needs or on their friends. Many see income generation as a way to support their families and some are also expected or forced to make money and bring it back home. Wargan and Dreshem (2009) further point out that street livelihood can be surprisingly effective, pulling in people from surrounding settlements by engaging them in piecework for local businesses and begging on the streets. Rosenthal, Mallett and Myers (2006) found conflict with parents as the only important reason for children to live in the streets. The desire for…show more content…
In the study by Ward and Seager (2010) on street children, children when asked about the causes of their being on the streets reported that they had gone onto the streets to search for one of their parents, with remarks such as My mother is deceased and I left home to search for my father. According to UNICEF (2005), illegitimacy is a contributing factor to the street children phenomenon. The study claimed that children who were born out of wedlock were more prone to abandonment and neglect because of social pressures that were put on the mothers and fathers of such a child. In most cases the children will opt for the streets in search for the parent, protection and…show more content…
Many children have reportedly run away from home to escape schools where they experience humiliation, rejection and failure (Le Roux, 1997). Socio-economic and political conditions as well as historical developments form the context in which the youth's decisions to leave are embedded (Schernthaner, 2011). There are many unfortunate incidents which cause children as young as 3 years old to end up on the streets (Berezina, 1997). Clacherty (2009), argued that children arrive on the streets due to perceptible array of social problem most of which tend to be directly or indirectly attributed to poverty. Le Roux (1997), interestingly, some children escape the home environment to “be part of the action” on the streets, are motivated to seek their fortune and find a better life than the one to which they would have been destined had they stayed at home. Additionally, the majority of these children have various reasons either abounded or have been abounded by their families and have been migrated to urban areas in order to earn living (Clacherty, 2009). Another aspect to consider are circumstances where there is social pathology and anti-social behaviour such as child abuse and neglect in the family situation, children are evicted from their homes as unwanted, or driven away due to a lack of parental concern (Le Roux, 1997).

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