Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2000. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Mail and Guardian (Johannesburg) - October 20, 2000
Paul Kirk
As the Aids pandemic sweeps through South Africa large numbers of households may soon be headed up by children too young to even vote.
This week Minister of Social Development Dr Zola Skweyiya told the Mail & Guardian that one of the worst consequences of the HIV/Aids pandemic is the large number of children who will be robbed of parents, breadwinners, caregivers and role models by HIV/Aids.
Skweyiya said that the government's research indicated that by 2005 up to one million children under the age of 15 will have lost at least one parent to HIV/Aids.
However this figure could be much higher, according to an NGO that deals extensively with HIV/Aids.
According to Cathy Madden, the coordinator of Sinisizo Home Based Care, an NGO that teaches families how to care for the terminally ill, the situation is probably far worse than the government thinks as many rural families do not report HIV/Aids to welfare authorities.
The realisation of this has led Madden's organisation to become joint author of a manual aimed at helping children to take on their new responsibilities.
The manual, titled A Training Programme for Volunteers Offering Home-Based Care to Children Living with Aids, has been compiled with the assistance of three top academics from the child and family centre of the school of psychology - Dr Rose Schoeman, Bev Killian and Angela Hough.
The guide aims to give caregivers advice on how to assist children in dealing with bereavement, and how to explain to children that their parents are dead.
One example of this is the suggested phrase, "Mommy's body has stopped and she can no longer come back." The guide also gives advice on how, when and whether parents should tell children they are HIV-positive.
According to Schoeman, caregivers often struggle psychologically themselves when forced to explain death to children.
One of the major themes of the guide is building self-esteem and helping children cope with emergencies - for example, food shortages - that would normally only be dealt with by adults.
Schoeman said that as far as she is aware, the guide - which is still being revised - is the only one of its kind in the world.
Schoeman said she was not aware of how many children were at risk from HIV/Aids, but that the problem was "quite terrible". She confirmed Madden's theory that the HIV/Aids pandemic was far worse than often thought.
Said Madden: "Because of the stigma attached to HIV/Aids a lot of families, especially in the rural areas, do not report HIV/Aids cases."
Schoeman said the purpose of the guide was to build resilience in children who were vulnerable because of HIV/Aids. "For example we teach social workers to ask children what their last problem was and how did they solve it. A child may say, for example, that the last problem they faced was that the family had no food, but they solved the problem by asking the neighbour for something to eat. The idea is to make children resilient, to teach them how to solve problems they may encounter if they have to head a household." Madden said that while many very young children are cared for by grandparents at the moment, this may soon no longer be the case as grandparents die of old age, leaving no support for children robbed of parents by HIV/Aids.
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