Initiation into street, challenges, means of survival and perceived strategies to alleviate its plights among street children in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 2019

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Abstract Background: The life and health of street children is becoming a global concern. There is a wide range of legislation relevant to street children. However, poor design and implementation of policies, strategies and traditional response by most governments in Africa has been subjugated. This made street children defenseless to harassments, child trafficking and health problems.Methodology: A phenomenological study design was employed to explore difficulties of street life experience and perceived strategies to alleviate them. The study was conducted from January to March 2019. A Time-Space Sampling (TSS) was used to recruit participants. Pre-tested interview guide was used for data collection. Data was analyzed by using framework analysis software. A code book was developed under three themes (Initiation into street life, means of survival and perceived strategies) with different sub-themes and categories.Results: A total of 103 street children age 10-18 years took part in the study. Complexity of push and pull factors pose to a risk of flee to the street. Street children face widespread challenges i.e. social network fragmentation, child trafficking, harassments and shortage of basic needs. Furthermore, absences of complete and representative data on street children as well as strategies are hardly available. Thus, street children have been considered as felon, out laws and having a mentality of committing crime by both law keeping bodies and the society. These in turn is affecting street children’s’ acceptance by their community and get legal protection under the law that made them more susceptible to harassments, denial of access to education and health services. To survive, they use different mechanisms including group formation - where, every individual within the group has his or her mandate for collective security, share available resources and vital information that might be useful for the group. Conclusion: Lack of policies and strategies targeting street children has made them prone to many problems. Therefore, call for different stakeholders in supporting to design and implement clear, case based and contextualized strategic policies to address and prevent plights of street children. Intervention targeting positively perceived street children’s proposed strategies has to be considered.

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