Promoting Resilience in ‘Sex Worker’ Children: The Role of Residential Childcare Institutions in Bangladesh

Abstract

Brothel children are the most marginalised within society. They are shunned by mainstream society and thus denied opportunities to mix with other groups of children. They carry a sense of shame regarding their origin, whether as a result of their direct involvement in the world of prostitution or merely by association – often, they are seen as ‘dirty’, ‘uncouth’, ‘unwanted’, ‘jaroj’ (bastards), ‘harami’ (whore kids). They suffer greatly from social stigma and discrimination. Sex worker mothers, on the other hand, due to the nature of their work, have little time to devote to their children. Residential childcare research is a relatively new area in the social work field in Bangladesh. Unfortunately, much negative publicity has been heaped on residential childcare institutions–their operational systems, practices and outcomes have often been found to be at fault. Although in large part this may be true, my study, interestingly, found institutional care in some part, to be rather more positive, and thus potentially useful to childcare social work practitioners in Bangladesh and elsewhere. This paper, broadly descriptive, explores the experiences of care, leaving care and after care from the perspective of a group of sex workers’ children and young people who lived in NGO-run residential homes in Bangladesh. It tries to understand the preparation process that enabled them to adjust better into wider society. The findings show that along with food, shelter and education, residential care staff actively created opportunities for them to develop safe relationships that fostered friendship and commitment with others, including the wider communities in which they lived. The findings show that crucial lessons for the minority world could be learned from this study, namely the notion that the whole community needs to take responsibility for these vulnerable children if resilience is to become entrenched in them; and that attention needs to be paid to building relationships with adults, peer groups, parents, and the community at large.