PLANS TO REUNITE 1 800 KIDS WITH FAMILIES

MBABANE – The Deputy Prime Minister’s (DPM) office is working on reuniting over 1 800 children with their families.

These are children placed in foster care families and residential child- care facilities, which indicated the level of vulnerability of these children. DPM Thuli Dladla said this idea also hoped to unite abandoned elderly persons with their children. She said they had initiated the programme to reunite abandoned elderly parents with their children. She explained that the aim was to promote healthy and functional relationships between the two.

The DPM stated that a comprehensive discussion would be held today, where they hoped to come up with strategies and processes regarding the issue. Dladla stated that her office had noted increasing cases of abandoned elderly persons and children, especially in rural communities, as a result of the rural-urban migration. “Currently, the office has a total of 1 855 children who have been displaced from their natural family environment and placed in alternative care facilities, thus indicating the level of vulnerability on these children.” Dladla said her office was mandated to provide care and protection to the poor and vulnerable in the country. According to Dladla, care and support were given to the elderly, children and persons with disabilities (PWDs). She said after visiting some homes, she realised that most were headed by elderly persons singlehandedly and at times with their grandchildren.

Dladla said the grandchildren were also depending on the elderly grant. According to the DPM, most of the elderly, when asked if they had children, they positively responded, adding that they had gone job-hunting and never returned.  She said children and young parents, upon reaching employable ages, migrated to urban areas in search of employment opportunities and a better life. “Once they are employed in the urban areas, they neglect their elderly parents and children who are left behind, without any means of support or survival to fend for themselves.”

Neglected

Dladla stated that the young parents often neglected and abandoned their babies and children of school-going age, who were left in the care of their grandparents, without any financial means to support them. Such, she said, resulted in some of the children permanently relocating from their original parental homes and settling in remote and far-flung areas, which may not be easily accessible by their ageing parents. Dladla said some of these children even changed their contact details so that they were not reachable or traceable. These situations, she said, caused a lot of frustration and stress to the abandoned elderly parents and children. Dladla stated that through the assistance of foster care homes, they had been able to reach out to the children. She stated that they worked with the foster homes from the stage where the child was taken in.

The DPM stated that they also had a halfway home, where they temporarily placed the children, before identifying a foster home where they would be permanently settled.  “We are hands-on and there is no child admitted to a foster home without our knowledge,” Dladla said.  She stated that before the children are taken in, certain agreements are made between the office and the homes. Meanwhile, she said working with the Ministry of Education and Training and other stakeholders, they were trying to come up with a programme whereby skills would be introduced at a tender age in school. This, she said would assist those children who ended up dropping out of school to have means to survive. Dladla said such could present opportunities at community level when skills like carpentry and wiring were required by Rural Development Fund (RDF) and Micro-Projects, among others. She said they had a project in which they collaborated with the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA),  where they identified artisans and provided job opportunities at community level.

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