Poverty and Perception: Driving Sri Lankan Children's Homes at Multiple Levels

Abstract

In Sri Lanka, many children are housed in institutions for economic, social and cultural reasons, as well as the impacts of the civil war and global climatic change. Children's homes house almost 20,000 children, a huge population who have been denied basic human rights by being deprived of parental care and labelled orphaned, abandoned or destitute. These figures are disturbing in a multi-religious and diversely cultured state where moral rhetoric abounds, but concerns need to be translated into practice. This participatory action research was carried out across all nine provinces in Sri Lanka, involving policy makers and service providers responsible for children without parental care. All commissioners of the Provincial Departments of Probation and Child Care Services were interviewed to ascertain their role in the policy-making process. Thirty managers from different children's homes were interviewed concerning their service provision. All 298 probation officers, 287 child rights promotion officers, and matrons and wardens of all 416 children's homes were included in a questionnaire census approach. Of these, approximately half responded. The recruitment of these groups as participants for the study was based on the aim of using their feedback to produce a set of guidelines for the process of policy making and governance of children's homes. The responses to the questionnaires and the narratives of interviews were analysed on the basis of the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children and the General Standards for promoting the quality of services in voluntary children's homes in Sri Lanka. The answers were separated into several themes and rated to identify the core themes. This participatory action research has identified many issues of policy implication and service provision across agencies charged with the care of children. This paper investigates the impacts of socio-economic and cultural environments on children both before and during their institutionalization.