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Kendra is emailing us updates from the International AIDS Conference in Vienna. Join in the conversation!

Entry #2:  Grandparents – correcting a common misconception

A serious misconception on grandparent headed households is that they are all elderly or consist of frail caregivers unable to provide adequate support for the children under their care.  Recent evidence indicated that some grandparents are young (60 or less) and quite able and even those who are not young are finding ways through social networks to provide for the children under their care. The existence of social networks and the ability to engage reciprocally in these networks are key to sustaining support for these households.

 

Kendra is emailing us updates from the International AIDS Conference in Vienna. Join in the conversation! 

Entry #1: Children as carers

In the recent past, research conducted on children affected by HIV/AIDS indicated that the phenomenon of child headed households was not as prevalent as we thought. However, recent evidence indicates that we were looking at the issue in the wrong way. It is not who is heading the household. Rather, it is who is assuming caregiving responsibilities within that household.

 

More and more the burden of care is shifting to children even in instances where there is an older caregiver in the household. However, that caregiver may be ill or too frail to adequately handle all the caregiving tasks. As a result, children are taking more responsibility for providing for the families (engaging in economic activity) and providing care for other members of the households including young children and older grandparents.  Child carers include a wide range of children beyond those who are heading households. It also includes children who are living with parents who have a chronic and debilitating illness; those living with and caring for increasingly frail grandparents, who may have formerly been caring for their adult child; and those heading households and caring for younger siblings.  The changing caregiving dynamics requires a paradigm shift from thinking only of child headed households as the target group for intervention. Rather, we should be looking more at the age and capacity (including a look at disability) of caregivers in these households.

Below is today's news from around the world, specifically related to orphans and vulnerable children. The news is edited and shared daily. If you like, you can subscribe to the shared RSS news feed.

The weekly digest provides a snapshot of news and resources on orphans and other vulnerable children featured on other sites in the previous week but not on this site. In this first edition, I am including highlights from the previous week as well as information about other relevant issues that had been featured this year.

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