**7.2 Psychosocial support related challenges**

Regarding psychosocial support and emotional care, it was generally acknowledged that caregivers lacked the knowledge and skills to diagnose and effectively address the psychosocial needs of the 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children in their care. Instead, they considered emotional and psychosocial needs within a broader realm of care that 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children received. This may have a profound impact on the future of these children since the nature of the response to the psychosocial needs of these 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children may have a farreaching impact on their social and emotional development. Caregivers reported great challenges associated with the upbringing of the children. In a household where 'orphans' and vulnerable' children were under the care of other relatives, not their biological parents, efforts were made to ensure that they are brought up in the same way as the caregivers' children. In this regard, one of the caregivers remarked that:

*Despite some of the workshops for psychosocial support we attended facilitated by the local non-governmental organisations, we are still facing a lot of challenges in convincingly counselling 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children at the household level. Our children these days are taught to understand their rights to the extent that any actions from us caregivers which appear to be somehow ill-treatment may create a lot of discontents which requires one to be conversant with the psychosocial approach to help the child to get to normalcy.*

The participant shows that within the rural areas social workers and professional counsellors are not easily accessible to provide their services in case their 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children develop emotional challenges or in the case of any misunderstandings between the caregivers and the 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children at the household level. This was further confirmed by one of the caregivers who observed that:

*I had an experience with my deceased sister's daughter who was assaulted at school and emotionally disturbed. She could not eat for quite some time and developed moods and sometimes crying. This disturbed us a lot and no one at home had the psychosocial know-how to help until we outsourced the help from a local pastor who had to talk with her until she opens on what was emotionally bothering her. She also revealed that she was discriminated and assaulted with our biological children.*

This participant reveals that the caregivers have challenges in discerning what emotionally and psychologically traumatises their 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children and hence, they do not have the information to deal with those psychosocial challenges. The 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children may have shelter, food, school

*The Caregivers' Perspective in Coping with the Challenges Faced by Orphans and Vulnerable… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101232*

fees and medication but without the provision of psychosocial services, the other assistance may be rendered useless. When asked why these children behaved in that way, it was discovered that even the caregivers did not know why these children behaved that way. However, when triangulated, one of the 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children when asked why they feel discriminated against explained that:

*We are always beaten up even for no apparent reason with our aunt and forced to work very hard while her children are seated at home. So, this causes me and my young sister to feel unwanted and discriminated against in the household.*

The study revealed that psychosocial support was a critical need but due to lack of skills to appropriately diagnose and respond to it, it was largely neglected. It was evident from the study that while caregivers were expected to be the main source of psychosocial support for 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children, they also need emotional support to address challenges in providing care for 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children in a context of limited resources. In their response, most caregivers indicated that they do nothing in case of an emotional challenge. However, caregivers who had a strong spiritual orientation indicated that they turn to prayer and singing as a way of dealing with stressful situations. This was verified by another respondent who explained:

*When I feel stressed, I just go to my bedroom and pray. I like singing, so I sing church songs and that is how I forget my problems.*

When asked, most of the caregivers indicated that they predominantly pray or go to church as a coping strategy regarding emotional challenges. There was also a significant portion of caregivers who indicated that they do nothing, while others resorted to strategies such as drinking, scolding children, or simply keeping quiet. This could reflect poor access or lack of awareness about psychosocial services in the study area. The ultimate impact could be that caregivers could become burned out which could have severe long-term implications on the welfare of 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children in their care.

In corroboration of what the 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children and the caregivers explained above, the community leaders and stakeholders who include the traditional leaders, faith-based organisational leaders and non-governmental organisational representatives, explained that they have had several experiences where 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children in Gutu District reported cases of abuse, exploitation, and assault by their caregivers. The community leaders within their different roles in the rural communities concerning the 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children confirmed that there are always conflicts between the 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children and their caregivers in the district because the caregivers lack the psychosocial support training to help their 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children and the services of the professional counsellors and social workers are not readily available other than through sporadic visits of the non-governmental organisations' representatives.

### **8. Discussions of the findings**

Evidence from the findings has shown that caregivers were struggling to adequately provide for the needs of their 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children as stipulated in both the UNCRC and ACRWC. Whilst several challenges were mentioned regarding challenges related to the data, food and nutrition and psychosocial support predominantly emerged as the major recurring themes of the participants. The findings concurred with Ringson [9] and Chizororo [7] who assert that psychosocial support and material needs recently became the major needs for 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children. It is also important to be aware that children have the right despite their status to be adequately fed, a right that is supported by the UNCRC. As such, depriving children of nutritious food is an infringement of their rights. Because of the challenge posed by this material need, the caregivers confirmed that they were initially able to feed their 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children with locally produced food such as wild fruits, vegetables, maize and sweet potatoes. However, the type of food that is recommended by authorities and demanded by children is now different because of modern shifts and improved knowledge of nutrition. Furthermore, due to the high population density in the study area, the land shortage was acute especially for those living in the Gutu rural communities. As a result, involvement in gardening had begun to negatively impact the household capacity to produce adequate food. In some instances, caregivers would pledge their children for marriages in the communities or churches for them to be given a piece of land, cattle, or food in return. This resonates with Ringson [15] who argued that some children's rights as stipulated in both the UNCRC and ACRWC conflict with some African cultural perspectives of child upbringing. The caregivers experienced this as a setback in their attempts to balance the conventional children's rights and the traditional rights in the ubuntu parenthood childcare model.

It was clear from the findings that the 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children who lack quality food at home do not perform well at school and are susceptible to destructive emotional challenges. In this regard, Pillay [22] emphasises that the lack of food as a fundamental right of the children may influence them to make poor decisions in their lives such as early marriages or being abused sexually, abusing drugs, or stealing. Generally, the community leaders attributed the food shortages to chronic poverty, which grossly affected the people's agricultural activities in Zimbabwe, and which were exacerbated by destructive political decisions as highlighted by Chigora and Guzura [33] and Hove [8]. By implication, these findings converged with the finding that caregivers were generally unable to meet the conventional requirements and standards for feeding the children, especially in most of the developing countries due to chronic poverty. Some strategies were applied by the caregivers of 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children at the household level to address their food and nutrition needs. To cope with increased family sizes or to accommodate the loss of adult labour, children were found to have assumed greater roles in food production. The need for children to provide agricultural labour was widely reported by caregivers as one of the primary reasons why children were kept in public schools near their homes, despite their reservations on the quality of education offered in those schools. In a traditional African family setting, children constitute a strong source of labour for agriculture. Hence, this was considered predominantly as a legitimate coping strategy, assuming that children are supported to acquire agricultural experience and skills in the long term. However, some respondents indicated that there were instances where children were indeed overworked as a coping strategy to supplement livelihoods at the household level.

Regarding the challenges related to psychosocial support, it was revealed that the caregivers do not have the skills to help their children during their sporadic or protracted times of emotional agony. Evidence from the findings shows that some 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children have emotional challenges emanating from the loss of their parents, being exposed to discriminatory child labour, stigma and verbal and sexual abuse at the household level, community level and schools. Whilst all these are crimes and infringements of children's rights according to the UNCRC and ACRWC, the children will continue to be victims emotionally and

#### *The Caregivers' Perspective in Coping with the Challenges Faced by Orphans and Vulnerable… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101232*

physically because of the lack of knowledge around psychosocial support of their caregivers. In some instances, the caregivers are now afraid of reprimanding their 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children fearing that they might have to account to the law enforcement authorities for their actions [9, 21]. By implication, what this means is that if the caregivers continue to implement their culturally based rights in caring for 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children in contravention of the conventional rights of children, psychosocial support challenges in form of verbal and sexual abuses and child labour in the name of culture will not end, especially within the rural communities of Zimbabwe.

The study further asserts that without proper psychosocial support mechanisms, orphans often spend most of their time and energy trying to create some type of order and security for themselves out of unpredictable situations and struggle with their identity problems. Because of the above, Killian [13] posits that the long-term consequences for children who experience profound loss, grief, hopelessness, fear, and anxiety are psychosomatic disorders, chronic depression, low self-esteem, low levels of life skills, learning disabilities, and disturbed social behaviour. This study found that such psychosocial challenges are still rampant within the rural communities and the ignorance and scarcity of the social workers and professional psychologists to help with professional counselling poses a lot of challenges to the caregivers, 'orphans' and 'vulnerable' children and the community at large.

Following the prevalence of these effects, the psychosocial support of caregivers is an acknowledged need because they are often stressed whenever they engage with children who are regularly exposed to painful experiences. From the empirical analysis of this study, it can be determined that grandparents, children caring for younger children, and caregivers who provide care for many children often find it difficult to cope. They may blame themselves for not being able to do enough, even though they must also deal with their grief and sadness. They further indicated that many caregivers struggle to meet their children's needs, such as food, clothes, health care and schooling, and give them love and attention in conditions of financial hardship and without the necessary practical medical and social support, they suffer psychosocial ill-effects. In that context, for critical children's rights to be complied with, especially within the rural communities, there is a need for the caregivers to be regularly trained and empowered to understand the difference between their culturally-oriented approaches in childcare and the conventional approaches. Thus, Ringson [9] asserts that the ubuntu parenthood child-care model alone without being blended with the conventional modern approaches will sufficiently help both the caregivers and their children in attaining sustainable livelihood within their communities.
