The Situation of Children Who Lost Their Parents: The Case of Addis-Ketema Sub-City, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
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Date
2014-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This research aims to understand the situation of children who lost their parents in Addis-Ketema sub-city, Wereda 09, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A qualitative research method, case study, is used in order to accomplish the research objective. The data collection instruments were in-depth interview, and observation supplemented with field note. Empirical data is collected from a total of eighteen respondents of which eight of them are children, who are between 13 to 18 years of age, the other eight are guardians of the children and two key informants, who have an expert knowledge about bereaved children. The major findings of the study illuminate that, single/double parental death negatively affects the well-being of children. Some of the drawbacks of parental death include; psychological, educational, health, and economical challenges. The study results show that child grief response differs from one child to the other but the commonly showed grief responses are crying, shocks, frighten, denial, hopelessness, sensitivity, isolation, anger, feeling of accusation, attitudinal change towards death, acceptance and emotional fluctuations. Finally the upshots of the study show that, after the death of one or both parents the specific roles and responsibilities will be switched to the living parent and children are forced to carry out domestic house work, engage themselves in casual jobs, tutoring and fully managing their younger siblings. In conclusion, when children lose one or both parents they experience simultaneous changes and the bearings in their lives. Therefore, the study findings had an implication for social work education, policy frame works, future researches and intervention
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Parental death; children;guardians/single parent; Addis-Ketema sub-city