LOCKDOWN IN A SHACK...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUUTH AFRICA

The Covid-19 lock-down in South Africa has been extended until the end of April. No school, no sport, no work.

Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures. These suggestions are an attempted response to a question directed to me and some others in social media. It was..Is it possible to keep any "explorers" (children) in a one roomed shack for ,altogether 35 days? It went with a pic of the tightly situated shacks of an informal settlement. In South Africa, typical of many densely populated settlements of one room shacks. 

It has been obvious from the start that lock-down favoured the rich and privileged. The informal settlements have to comply and have rough deal. My answer.. No, you can't keep children in a one roomed shack without essential services such as electricity, water, sanitation indoor stimulation, toys, internet and possibly no mobile phone 

Now is the time to employ child and youth care workers...and there are many presently unemployed in South Africa. Child and youth care workers, among their many other professional trained abilities, have knowledge and skill in the creation of designed environments to optimally meet the needs of children (explorers). Child and youth care workers work wherever children are. Child and youth care workers have, a wealthy vocabulary of stimulation programme activities for children and young people.

An essential basic...Testing and masks for children are an absolute priority if programmes for children are to be initiated.

Now for some of those extraordinary measures/suggestions. 

(1) Create clusters/sections of shacks as a boundaried home base. A largish "family" as it were. As far as possible with a small accessible open space. I've seen a small section of street used as an open space. 
(2) Create cluster committees to brainstorm needs and ideas as well as to monitor movement.
(3) A community-based child and youth care worker, as an essential service worker, to be allocated to a boundaried cluster of shacks and the children in that cluster. This is an extension of the present situation in which only child and youth care workers in Child and Youth Centres are regarded as essential service workers
(4) Supply to the cluster, portable toilets and portable wash stations within reach of the allocated small open space.
(5) The possibility should be seriously considered of having equipped mobile activity child stimulation centres. Like the mobile clinic, library or testing units.
(6) The provision of child centered activity packs. Food parcels, it is said, are provided, so let us add an activity pack for the children. Such a pack can include for example, craft supplies, small games, puzzles, some toys,educational materials, stationary.. you know the kind of things, I'm thinking of.       
(7) useful would be "towers", even car tyres to make towers, and what is needed to make a container vegetable garden.

There was, decades ago, research undertaken at the Frere Hospital in East London in the Eastern Province of South Africa. The outcome proved dramatically what, I guess, we  know. The children in the "Sunshine Ward", long term patients, were found to be unstimulated. Routines only. The children did not thrive as they should, physically. They did not follow the usual developmental mile-stones. They under-performed cognitively and in the use of language.
A simulation programme was introduced. The next batch of children received the full benefit from admission. They thrived holistically.

 I have always thought that parents, should not only be encouraged to provide stimulation, but to be shown how and where needed, given the resources to do this at home. Even with little to now resources. There are really useful stimulation activities for children and young people using scrap. Here is an opportunity for child and youth care workers in our work with children and young people in the family. Especially now in the Covid-19 lock-down.

The President of South Africa in his address to the Nation, said that we will find South African solutions to our present difficult time. We have a South African community-based professional child and youth care model in the Isibindi Project. It has much to teach us in meeting the needs of children locked-down in shacks, for many of the Isibindi programmes were established to serve such communities. One of the add-on programmes to Isibindi is the Safe Park. Some were fitted with a single container for storage and a planning/work station for a community-based child and youth care worker. Then came the Temporary Safe Park. No set space and no big equipment. Just a circle marked out with plastic traffic beacons. The circle is then equipped with games for children. All of this can be packed in and out of a car. Social distancing is possible with proper control.  

Safe Parks also taught us to enlist volunteers in the community and to stimulate community buy-in and support. I'm thinking in these times of need for children a carefully planning with child and youth care workers could be scheduled to reach given numbers of boundaried clusters of shacked homes and numbers of children.

To wrap up. There is an urgency to act and to think creatively..child centered; to think and act now, to keep high density, poor children with no resources, safe from the virus and at the same time to involve them in stimulation programmes that engage them. This is the task of child and youth care workers.... employ us!

Now is the time. for the sake of children, employ child and youth care workers. Provide them with the resources and don't pay them peanuts. The children, especially in informal settlements, need us NOW.