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Psychosocial support key to fulfillment of children's rights
Child Protection Society (CPS)
Extracted from the Child Advocate Newsletter, Issue No. 3
December 2003

Psychosocial support (PSS) has been recognized as the most holistic approach towards fulfilling the rights of children affected by HIV and AIDS, a PSS advocacy workshop recommended recently.

The workshop, attended by 20 participants from East and Southern Africa, noted that most non governmental organisations (NGOs) and Community Based Organisations (CBOs) who were involved in programs that address the rights of children, concentrated on providing material such as education assistance, health and nutrition projects. Where Early Childhood and Care services were offered, the major aim was to provide at least a meal a day to the children.

However some children who were receiving these services were not achieving self reliance because of other unfulfilled rights. Providing psychosocial support for children helps to meet the children’s social, mental, physical and emotional needs.

"PSS begins with recognizing the strength and resilience in the child affected by HIV/Aids," said Ms Doreen Mukwena, the director of the Child Protection Society. "Most people associated the word orphan with negative statements such as poor, needy, helpless, depressed," Ms Mukwena said, adding "But these children should be affirmed as determined survivors, who have experienced extreme grief and pain, but still live on".

Ms Mukwena was one of the participants to the psychosocial support (PSS) advocacy workshop held for the partners of the Regional Psychosocial support Initiative (REPSSI) in Johannesburg, in early September, 2003.

PSS a community responsibility
PSS provision, the workshop agreed, depends largely on communities that view themselves as duty bearers, responsible for providing support to all children as rights holders particularly orphans and vulnerable children (OVC). All functionaries in the community, from the extended family, neighbours community based groups, churches, schools, hospitals and other institutions have a contribution to make.

Children as part of the community, are key participants in providing PSS to each other. PSS approaches recognize children as social actors who can participate in issues that affect them. Contrary to this thinking, communities view children as "helpless victims who are fully reliant on adults for their well being giving way to tremendous negative long term consequences", according to the REPSSI media pack.

The benefits of PSS
At the closure of the workshop, the participants highly recommended that PSS should be mainstreamed at organizational level and in all programming. Mainstreaming PSS would assist organisations in developing indicators for standards of care that seek to fulfill the psychosocial rights of the children.

The benefits of PSS are immense. While children confront their problems and deal with them, PSS helps them to strengthen mind and body, and develop coping strategies for overcoming life’s challenges such as depression and loneliness, grief, hunger, poverty, stigma and discrimination. As a holistic approach to supporting children to overcome the trauma caused by HIV and AIDS PSS will harness the vulnerable human capital which would otherwise waste away in the streets and result in traumatized adults and a dysfuncinal society. It is however important to realize that the strength of PSS lies in its holistic nature and the wheel *below illustrates the interdependence of the element of PSS:

Figure 1
The elements in the wheel express the core principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child which are: Non-discrimination; Life, Survival and Development; Participation and The best of the child. Psychosocial Support for children affected by AIDS is therefore a right.

The elements in the wheel express the core principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child which are: Non-discrimination; Life, Survival and Development; Participation and The best of the child. Psychosocial Support for children affected by AIDS is therefore a right.

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