Adequacy of psychosocial care services provided to orphaned children by caregivers in Temeke district, Dar es salaam region, Tanzania

Death of parents is a traumatic event especially for young orphaned children because it leads to serous psychosocial stresses. The purpose of this study was to investigate the adequacy of psychosocial care services provided to orphaned children by caregivers. The objectives of the study examined the extent to which psychosocial care services provided to orphaned children by caregivers meet orphans needs, to identify psychosocial stresses affecting orphaned children and the effects on orphans’ psychosocial wellbeing, to explore coping mechanisms adopted by orphaned children. To examine the challenges caregivers encountered in providing psychosocial services to orphaned children. A qualitative design employing a case study method informed the study with 155 respondents, in the categories of (50) orphaned children, (50) caregivers, (50) teachers and five counselors. Data were collected using interviews, focus group discussion, observation and documentary review. The collected data were subjected to qualitative analysis using content analysis. The results showed that Orphaned children were provided with inadequate care services by grandparents, aunts, uncles and non-relatives who were the main caregivers identified by orphaned children, though some older orphaned siblings were also mentioned as caregivers for their younger siblings. The study revealed that most caregivers identified earlier were able to provide material support to orphaned children but were unable to provide emotional support like love and closeness to orphaned children. Thus orphaned children face psychosocial stresses like lack of basic needs like food and shelter, economic hardship, lack of parental love, stigma and rejection, depression, and sadness. To overcome these psychosocial stresses orphaned children use variety of coping mechanisms through looking for support, engaging in petty trades, begging, studying hard and others using the acceptance of the situation. The study identified the major challenges faced by caregivers to be huge numbers of orphaned children, economic hardship, lack of support from relatives, inability to provide love and affection and misbehaviors by orphaned children, and other caregivers being too old to care for children. Caregivers need both moral and material support to help them to improve the provision of psychosocial care services to orphaned children and how to overcome the challenges they are facing in carering for orphaned children. It is recommended that caregivers need to develop secure care-giving relations with orphaned children. The government in collaboration with NGOs, communities and international agencies should initiate programmes to train caregivers in providing psychosocial care services for orphaned children in their communities.