Why do the street children of Kathmandu do not want to live in rehabilitation homes?

Abstract

Objective: The general objective of the present study was to identify the factors associated with street children's decision to live in Rehabilitation homes.

Material and method: It was a cross sectional study with 118 respondents. Data were collected by snowball sampling using constructed questionnaire and focus group discussion was also done for in-depth understanding. Descriptive, Chi-square and multivariate logistic regression study was carried out based on the PRECEDE model to analyze the data.

Results: Lack of care (p-value = 0.005), attitude of the respondents (p-value = 0.004), strict rules within the organizations (p-value = 0.025) and resilience of the respondents (p-value = 0.001) were significantly associated with the decision of the children to live in rehabilitation homes. The results of the multivariate logistic regression confirmed that children who were weakly resilient were 4.5 times more likely (OR = 4.54, 95% CI: 1.28-16.06), moderately resilient were 4 times more likely to live in rehabilitation homes (OR = 4.24, 95% CI: 1.53-11.68), than strong resilient. Children with favorable attitude were 16 times more likely to join rehabilitation homes (OR = 16.30, 95% CI: 1.78-149.10) than those favorable ones.

Conclusion: The results showed that the children had open access to rehabilitation programs and services, but they had an unfavorable attitude towards the organizations. Most of the children were resilient and well aware of their situation. Organizations were mostly seen by these children as a means of support, but not the only option to better their life, indicating that programs and services should be planned accordingly and should not focus on institutionalizing them as the only solution.