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Abstract
Home background plays a very significant role in the lives of children. The love, respect and attention given to a child at home greatly influences his/her belonging to that home. Knowing the conditions of children at home is imperative if we wish to tackle the problems of street children in Cameroon. This study was to identify and assess the factors associated with the phenomenon of urban street adolescents in 3 cities in Cameroon by looking at the family conditions regarding children’s decision to run away from home. This cross sectional study was carried out on a non-probability snow-ball sample of 399 street children aged 12 to 17, with selection based on their availability and inclusion criteria. Data was collected through interpersonal administration of questionnaires then analysed by univariate and bivariate calculation of frequencies as well as cross tables and chi-square (at what level of significance?). After data collection and cleaning, data was captured in Microsoft Excel (2010) spreadsheet and imported into SPSS statistical package version 19 for windows (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA, for analysis). The study results showed that 75.2% of the participants could not meet their needs while at home, due to the poor status of their parents/guardians as confirmed by 84.5% of them. It should also be noted that 74.7% of participants reported not able to have sufficient meals while at home. Additionally, 70% of participants lived with troublesome (use a different word) parents/guardians such as drunkard or those who are mentally unstable and consequently they had neither respect nor affection for them. The study concluded that the participants experienced unfavourable home circumstances which contributed to them leaving/running from home to dwell on the streets. The Cameroon government should therefore play a major role in assisting street children to ensure that their rights and basic needs are met.
Highlights
Poverty has been identified as one of the reasons why vulnerable children are forced to work and live on the streets in most urban cities around the world [1]
The questionnaires were written in English and French languages, and were translated into pidgin English which is a language frequently use in Cameroon and amongst street children especially in the city
This study was conducted on 399 street children out of which 80.2% were male and 19.8% female
Summary
Poverty has been identified as one of the reasons why vulnerable children are forced to work and live on the streets in most urban cities around the world [1]. In the Cameroon society, parents question and put their children under control some others pay little or no attention towards their children which means giving a blind eye to whatever offense their children commit irrespective of its intensity thereby putting the children in a confused state [3, 8] In such a family setting, children are free to do whatever they want such as being in the company of bad friends, gangs, sleeping out at night without being questioned by their parents when they return [3,4,5]. This study refers to the ways in which children are being brought-up in homesand parent’s behaviours which either encourages or discourages their children to run to the streets in the cities of Bamenda, Douala and Yaoundé
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