Orphanage Risks and Needs Assessment (ORINA) in Cameroon

Background

Orphans are children who have lost one or both parents. Orphanages are institutions that provide care and support for these children. It is for this reason that orphans have become a point of attraction for attention especially in the domain of giving. A day will come when humanity and civilization advancement will depend on its provision for the vulnerable and disadvantaged people, and particularly the protection it gave to orphans and vulnerable children (Foster, Levine et al. 2005).

Modern orphanages have as goal to offer education, healthcare, and other services to help children develop into healthy and productive members of society (Abebe 2009).

Orphaned and vulnerable children present with more needs and risks unlike their counterparts with parents and leaving in a family setting. However, orphanages have always played an important role in providing care and support to vulnerable children, though the risks they face and their particular needs are most of the time wrongly perceived by donors.

The highest difficulties faced is that beneficiaries and stakeholders are usually not consulted on the nature of support (Whetten, K., et al. 2014). This leads to the fact priority of needs is not respected like school fees etc.. this simply shows that, most of the times, donations are given based on the donors perspective and initiative not taking into account the real needs of the orphans.

This Orphanage Risks and Needs Assessment (ORINA) study hopes to tell the story of orphans and vulnerable children on social, health, economic and psychological perspectives for response by governments, agencies, faith-based organisations, communities, families and the children themselves.

The study will this provide a platform for informed possible interventions to mitigate and improve livelihood of orphans and vulnerable children living in orphanages.

Objectives

General objective :

• To establish an inventory of risks and needs of children living in orphanages in Cameroon.

Specific objectives shall be:

• To establish a cartography of all orphanages in Cameroon.
• To determine gaps in psychosociodemographic characteristics of children living in orphanages with their peers in the community, and associated factors.
• To determine gaps in clinical characteristics of children living in orphanages and their peers in the community, and associated factors.
• To establish inventory of health hazards in orphanages.
• To determine and classify health risks in orphanages.
• To determine and prioritize needs of orphanages.
• To advocate for stakeholders to address gaps.
• To measure impact of interventions.

Expected Results

A database of risks and needs associated to orphanages in Cameroon that will compose :

• A cartography of all orphanages
• The risks and needs associated to each orphanage in order of priority.
• Factors associated with vulnerability and gender variability of OVC in orphanages.

Next Step

• Finalise the protocol
• Get ethical Clearance and all the administrative notes.
• Validate the data collection tools.
• Recruit and train data collectors.
• Collect the data
• Data management processes and report writing.
• Dissemination of report to the appropriate stakeholders.

Conclusion

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study on the comprehensive risk and need assessment of orphanages in Cameroon and the region.

This study can thus be used to set a national observatory of orphanages in Cameroon.