Abstract
Ph.D. (Education)
The effects of daily abuse and hardship on the streets lead street children to suffer from poor mental health resulting in them choosing ineffective and self-destructive coping strategies that then impacts their physical health and their overall sense of well-being.
Facilitation of the mental health of street children subjected to daily threats to their survival is thus crucially needed. In my previous research, I indicated that street children are more vulnerable to impaired psychological health than any other group of children (Moolla, 2007:65-78; Moolla, Myburgh & Poggenpoel, 2008:597). The results of this research further confirmed that street children experience a vast array of negative feelings during their daily survival activities on the street which impact negatively on their mental and physical health. I also found that negative feelings of fear, abandonment, rejection, sadness, loss of trust, disillusionment and a sense of both hopelessness and uncertainty were experienced by all the street children in the study during their daily activities necessary for their survival.
As a psycho-educational facilitator, I am equipped with the skills to provide the facilitation of the mental health of street children subjected to daily abuse and hardship on the streets. Psycho-educational facilitators are highly valuable in providing an integrated healthcare-social-psychological approach when working with vulnerable individuals. To date, they are not being utilized to benefit the community and social health services, places of care and institutions catering for the neglected and abused individuals in our society.
The development of a model “Facilitating the mental health of street children” is the primary purpose of this research. The problem of street children suffering from challenges to their mental health due to their daily abuse encountered on the streets, made me realise that street children need urgent facilitation of their mental health. The fact that they made a decision to leave a usually abusive home and family environment for the street shows that street children already possess an inner resilience when it comes to self preservation. However, they frequently end up
choosing destructive coping strategies which makes it more difficult for them to utilise their inner resources to enhance their lives. Thus, this model focuses on nurturing this inner resilience present in street children in order to facilitate them toward enhanced mental health. Other important aspects of this research are guidelines and recommendations for psycho-educational facilitators or any healthcare professional with regard to how they should implement the model.