The study, which took place over a period of two years (2022 to 2024) in Harare, involved 24 children (aged between 9 and 18) and their families. Some children had spent as few as two days on the streets; others had been living on the streets for months. The longer a child has lived on the streets, the lower the chances of a successful reunification as they may have adapted or feel there’s no need to return home.

Officials from the Department of Social Development and Volunteers for Vulnerable Children, an organization that provides reunification support in Harare, helped me to identify participants.

Many of the children cited parental neglect and abuse, poverty, peer pressure, and divorce as reasons for leaving their homes and staying on the streets. A few had been orphaned. Some of them left their homes looking for employment in the city and ended up on the streets having failed to secure jobs.

One of the most important aspects of this study was that it centered on the children and their voices. Children are often considered too vulnerable and immature to have the agency to suggest solutions to the problems they face at home. This view neglects the fact that these children leave their homes to stay on the streets and then voluntarily decide to return – a solid sign of their agency.

Once the children had outlined the challenges they experienced at home, we brought them together with their families and community leaders, such as village heads and community care workers, to talk about strategies to strengthen their family bonds, build their collective resilience and keep the children at home.

The project provided livelihood support and parental training and linked the children with government support for education and communities for food support. One family that that had become homeless was helped by their community to find a shelter while two homeless children were reintegrated with foster parents.

All 24 of the children, in consultation with their guardians and community participants, decided that they wanted to return to school. They also wanted the chance to run their small businesses, such as buying and selling goats or chickens or buying and reselling other goods.

There was a clear commitment from all parties to making the reunification process work. One of the children’s fathers said:

I thank you for this initiative, I hope that my daughter passes her school and reaches her full potential. I promise to do anything in my power to do my best to support her education beyond what you have done.

And one of the children told us: “I am very thankful for this project, I am now back in school and have my goats for use in the future.”

We followed up by visiting the children and their families at their homes together with officials from our partner NGOs, social development officials from the government, community care workers or a combination of these groups. As of August 2024, all 24 children were still living at home with their families and 22 were back at school.

Looking forward

This initiative is similar to a model that’s been successfully tested in many Latin American countries, combining therapeutic approaches, livelihood support and educational support to ensure that family reunification is sustainable.

Our results suggest that this kind of intervention can work in Zimbabwe. We hope that the method can be scaled up and used elsewhere in the country to help children get off the streets, back to their families and education – and to ensure that their best interests are kept at the heart of all reunification programmes.

Lecturer, University of Zimbabwe

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here.