Children Mental Health and Development Project

IMI is working with in school chuldren to develop mental balance and general wellbeing, June 2015

Children Mental Health and Development Services
The challenges of children growing in broken families included; the big burden to achieve life goals on their own –with no hope of parental intervention, inability to make wise health decisions, difficulty to ensure personal safety and healthy social relations, generation of high pressure to achieve and to break development barriers (mentally, socially and institutionally), the fear of dropping out of school due to inability to pay fees on his or her own that catapults into failure to concentrate and excel academically in order to attain a good career, inability to solve problems associated with choosing and having healthy relationships, and inability to manage chronic stress that characterizes his or her family life a condition that, potentially, pursues child into adulthood –and in responsible social positions. Also, there are critical challenges of lack of social support coupled with the lack of confidence to seek it –as viable path to building resilience required for the child succeed in life.
Family and individual members in it cannot be separated from the wider community. Indeed communalism is medicine of its own. The wider community had inexhaustible reserves for the family to access for survival and wellness purposes –which is a foundation for community survival and wellness –in return.
As the family continues to play its children development roles –providing both moral and physical support, the community, too, begins to identify its development concerns and wishes in that child. That, though, can either be for the good or worse. Responsibility on the part of family and community and eventual decisions made, thus, contributes to mental wellness of the child that characterizes freedom from the means to psychological trauma as violence.
Case study:
Decision making is a choice reached after verifying available options, consequences, and resources to pursue a specific cause. It is as a result of a cost-benefit analysis of having children that a prospecting parent made decisions, rather than on the basis of urges or feelings. This was so simply because urges or feelings did not think apart from causing excitement.
Attachment denotes the nature of the bond between the mother and the child while level of attachment implies the degree of the existing bond between the mother and the baby or child.
Children in Uganda have been most marginalized –with children-friendly health services only limited to referral hospitals. Elsewhere in the country, children share facilities and health care services with adults –an indiscriminate administration of health –yet special care for them is paramount.
Direct, structural and institutionalized violence too claims the lives and right morals of children. Domestic violence does not only take the life of one of the parents, but also is psychological violence –moreover the worst a human being can experience. That, now, becomes a children affair to deal with, or a shared experience upon observing parents fight.
Cultural environment –which is discriminative according to gender; never recognizes the rights of children and the reproductive health rights of women –and those have turned out to be a huge and overwhelming social cost –including HIV spread and under-development. Cultural provides a way of life that suffocates the rights of women and children as men behaved immorally –supported by it.
The economic environment disables parent’s ability to sustain children education, or not even at all afford it –yet it is through child education that the future a community is secured –given the highly productive citizenry.
The cycle continues from children dropping out of school and opting to marry or succumbing to wrong and untimely choices to conceive –when pressured by the economy; then there the burden becomes a product to be handed over from one generation to another –rendering the talk of children rights only a dream.
Now, that the parent unhealthy lifestyle dictates the quality of life of a children, level of attachment –a level where insecurities and future behavioral problems begin; irresponsible parenthood, reckless and risky behaviors of a parents as children observe, low or no health seeking ensues –as there will be no money and, ultimately, lack of motivation to adopt a healthy lifestyle –even when health guidelines are issued (which in turn affects children health), leads to broken family situations, or broken marriage relationships. And as the saying goes, “if elephants fight it is the grass that suffers,” the consequences accruing from broken-family situation hit children hardest –as all the anger gets projected to them in form of abuse and neglect.
It is from such grounds that families and communities face accountability for in the child’s teen or youthful years. No shall we have a moral fabric in society, violent free generations, because society simply ignores the root causes of structural violence –whose origin is quality of care of children right from conception. And who should save the children of Uganda?
Parenting is thus a responsibility one finds himself or herself under voluntarily or involuntary. During adolescence, gradual changes that may be cognitive, emotional, biological, physical and social or environment occur.
The qualities of changes are influenced by how well decisions are made at different levels of interaction (cognition, instinct or biology, emotional, social and/or natural environment) in relation to one’s sexuality. It all begins at conception –through important stages of birth, special care of newborns, weaning, and child in playful stage, socialization and learning, gender roles or interests, young stardom, youthful period and adulthood.
It is important explore parents’ basis of taking on responsibilities over children, quality and level of attachment, parent’s ability and circumstances under which she or he conceived, and the parent’s nature of the environment and lifestyle.
However, equal treatment among children (boys and girls) must be emphasized as it was told by children (4 boys and 4 girls) and adults (6 males and 6 females) such that they both benefit from existing development opportunities –of education (both formal and informal) and employment.
Friendliness between parents and children was highlighted (4:4) –with correction behavior attributed to light beating -with strongest emphasis put on friendly conversations with children (6:6). However, to parents, family planning was still a big challenge –as hardly at all did men approve of it (regarding condom use).
On the other hand, women complained of hemorrhage and delayed resumption of pregnancy as most negative (2 of 6 mothers).
Condom use was out of every parent’s mind –given the fact that they were married (6:6). 1 of 6 mothers said that she privately sought family planning services, because her husband did not care about it vital role. 2 of 6 women nurtured a norm that alcohol eased delivery and was associated to healthy and pretty babies.
Becoming a parent was not only an urge or a status reached by accident as some young women say, but an issue –not even pressure from elders or traditions could determine. It was important to look at children as human capital of the future –through integrating health care, nutrition, and early child care services for young children in developing countries.
It did not matter what age of pregnancy, but from the time of conception. But for the purposes of this submission, care had to start from the time one started developing feeling to become mother or father because, ultimately, the quality of decisions made counted in determination child health.
Child care was a cost the prospecting parents needed to think about long before deciding to conceive. In fact, child care began at conception. Successful child care ought to put that into consideration, otherwise the psychological implications of neglect and abuse potentially turned out to be the most damaging to the child or baby.
Failure of parents to ensure child health growth and development is by and large a result of poverty. This greatly hampered decision making. In rural and semi-urban areas it is only mainly men who went to work while women stayed home to cook and bare children.
In the same way, the nature of jobs determined by their level of education do not at the same time help meet children development needs as women complained of men’s negligence. There is thus a need to start life skills education, poverty alleviation program and reproductive health (or health education) programs to help better family-life situation.
Broken-family events are a result of extended family system failing to stand the test of time (twentieth and twenty first century new world order). As the urge to have children arose as traditionally demanded from the ages of 18 and above or less, the new order, instead, required productivity of prospecting parents before, at all, they decided to have children.
Others –even when economically liberated will tell you that things are not really. The confidence is only left to the possibility that God will provide for them. For some reason, the question of sustainability of care and love within the family set-up is ignored –yet critical.
Policy makers should embark on massive gender-conscious literacy or education programs intertwined with aspects that address reproductive health concerns, impart life skills, or vocational skills –all of which empower communities with tools of rightful decision making that go as far as influencing health children development, or for that make transform children rights talk from theory to practice.
HOW YOU CAN BE INVOLVED
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Telephone: +256774336277 or +256752542504
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Reaching Vulnerable Children Through Health and Education

Over the years (10) I have selflessly and compassionately contributed towards the welfare of children and community. I left the comfort of my family’s wealth and responsibilities as assets manager to transform the lives of most neglected sections of the community –focusing on the children using youth power. 

A community-based approach was employed, where if a community got empowered, the children followed. Both the out-of-school and in-school children reached were 49, 000 and 78 youths, who worked as change agents. The water-source projects were run side-by-side with environment health education, lessons on health decision-making and activities (involving tree planting, hand-washing, use and distribution of mosquito nets, and promotions of donor-supported immunization exercises, family planning, and HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention) in schools and community. 120 schools in 60 different communities directly benefited. Through a community development agency founded and run by me (Union of Community Development Volunteers –UCDV). My work helped to improve safe-water access and use, to scale-up prevention of the most common diseases among children (for example: diarrhea, cholera, malaria, and dysentery). 

While supporting the healthy development of children on one hand, the youths were being empowered on the other hand –with knowledge about their potential and practical skills. Acquired skills brought them income they much-needed to improve their welfare and self-managed projects for sustainable livelihoods. The youth effort under my leadership helped to create socioeconomic and health structures for children to survive and thrive.

While the youth (most of whom had children) were between the ages of 16 and 30), the children in question were from 5 and 18. It is worth reporting though that the programs went as far as helping the in-born and the less-than-5 to thrive parented by the volunteer program youths. 

Partners in that area of work were: local government department, community leaders, and internal and local non-government organizations –mainly with interest in volunteerism for community development such as the Uganda Water and Sanitation Networks (UWASNET), United Nations Volunteers (UNV), Volunteer Service Organization (VSO), and the National Volunteers Association. The partnerships were never in vain; instead they won me confidence, courage, and funding for UCDV –an umbrella under which I now work. 

More of such partnerships and networks are needed. In fact, the rewards from them now compels me to rethink the current partnership policy to include other organizations (non-volunteer based) and development agencies –with interests in children rights and advocacy, public health development, environment conservation, education, and poverty eradication. Strengthening structures for continuity of UCDV programs and replicating benefits to other vulnerable communities in the countryside has been his immediate need which from experience and drive the future is bright. 

By

Mutebi Eddie,

Executive Director,

Union Of Community Development Volunteers
Block 26, Plot 842, Professor Apolo Nsibambi Road, Bulange Zone 'A'
P.O. Box 35792, Kampala - Uganda
Telephone: +256 414 690 897
Mobile: +256 782 713 500

Addressing Global Problems at Family Level-A Case of an Abused and Neglected African Child

Family mental health is critical determinant of future of wars, turmoil and their consequences while parenting justified parenthood through realization of noble roles in respect of child development and growth that features child re-socialization and projection to independence, learning to co-exist peacefully with family members and society, and problem-solving to achieve defined goals in life.

As the family continues to play its development role -both moral and physical support in the life of a child, the community too begins to identify its development concerns and expectations of that child. This, though, as for families, can be for the good or worse. Responsibility on the part of the family and community and eventual decisions made, thus, contribute to mental wellness of the child, free from abuse and neglect.


For example, absence of love, trust, and feeling of security on the part of the child influence later development outlooks and, in years to come, it is society that either benefits or suffers. Some of the outcomes can be aggressiveness, fears, anxieties, and broken ambitions that, with time, go behavioral in the forms of substance abuse, irrational alliances or relationship to seek security, underachievement, anti-social behaviors, authoritative and abusive parenting, poor role modeling of parents –as some turn criminals, prostitutes or get diseased; and breakdown of the social fabric with violence in homes and in the wider society.
From the level of a family such outcomes later are manifested in communities -at places of work or in very important political positions -and these become corrupt national leaders, or military aggressors of nations in which masses suffer from acts of violence and psychological trauma.

The challenges of children growing in broken families include; the big burden to achieve life goals on their own -with no hope of parental intervention; no guidance to making wise health decisions, to ensure personal safety and healthy social assimilation.

That, generates high pressure and chronic stress to achieve, to break development barriers mentally, socially and institutionally; and child develops along the fear of dropping out of school due to inability to pay fees on his or her own –catapulted by failure to concentrate and excel academically, to attain a good career, inability to solve problems associated with choosing and having healthy relationships, and inability to manage chronic stress that characterizes his or her family environment –which shapes child's future into adulthood and in responsible social positions that the future provides. The child continues to live a life without social support and lack of confidence to seek it to viably building resilience required to succeed in life.

It was concluded from an intervention in the life of an abused child that the amount of resilience resulting from positive reinforcement from friends, teachers and inspiring leaders or roles models from media products, supported adaptability or coping -and some kind of positive spiritual inclinations greatly catapulted abused and neglected children through traps of childhood suffocation, underachievement, psycho-pathological enclaves and demeaning parental hostilities. It should be noted that involvement of in godly activities worked best for them in situations –where the victim trusted no one -including those who really loved them.

In addition to community intervention at village level, or at national level, or regional and global forces of peace restructuring, reconciliation and actual provision of physical needs to children goes a long way towards pacification of the individual or society, ensuring access to development needs and support information to successful yet sustainable human development –as critical means to control and prevent global wars and psychological trauma.

Graduate Peace and Conflict Studies Program
Makerere University
P.O. Box 7062, Kampala-Uganda
jwaiswa@arts.mak.ac.ug