Times are tough for Kenya’s lost tribe of 2.5m children

John* worked at Nairobi Children’s Home, a rescue centre, for over two years and the picture he paints of the institution is not a pleasant one.

He tells of a government institution which does everything but carry out its mandate — to ensure that the rights of the children under its care are upheld.

Kenya has 2.5 million orphans and vulnerable children and the Government, through the Department of Children’s Services, is tasked with safeguarding their welfare and rights. The department has a mammoth task having to care for so many children.

There currently exist 830 charitable children’s institutions in the country, to which the National Council for Children’s Services does not allocate specific resources but will from time give a token contribution.
There is a cash transfer programme that reaches some 126,000 families, which receive Sh1,500 per month.

This programme, according to Department of Children’s Services director Ahmed Hussein costs Sh3 billion a year.

Not all government money

But it’s not all government money. According to the budget, the Department for Children’s Services spends approximately Sh637 million on cash transfers to individuals and households and this year received Sh4 billion in support from the World Bank and the same amount from UK’s Department For International Development and Unicef as it is reportedly scaling up its programmes.

So the question begs: Where does the budget for the Department of Children’s Services go?

According to Mr Hussein, a large portion is allocated to government-run institutions, which provide shelter for Kenya’s orphaned and vulnerable children.

The Government runs 11 remand homes, nine rehabilitation schools and four rescue homes, bringing to 24 the number of these statutory institutions.

According to government statistics, these institutions hold 1,916 children. The remand, rehabilitation and rescue centres deal with specific cases of orphaned and vulnerable children.

The remand centres are for children who have had brushes with the law, but their cases have not yet been resolved.
These centres are considered safe places where the children can stay until their matters are determined, and it could be years.

The centres, however, have been criticised by Human Rights Watch in a report titled “Rights at Risk: Issues of Concern for Kenyan Children”.

The report says “many children plead guilty to crimes they are accused of, simply to avoid spending time in remand detention centres or remand prisons where conditions are known to be particularly harsh”.

Rehabilitation centres are for children who leave remand schools to be reintegrated with society. They usually stay there for three years.

Rescue homes are mainly for children who have been abandoned, abused or lost.
“They are meant to provide psycho-social support, social services and care,” Mr Hussein says.

He went on to say that “by and large, the meals, the clothing and care are good.”

And they should be — the Department of Children’s Services was allocated Sh1.4 billion in the 2010/2011 budget, an amount higher than the budget allocated to roads, tourism services or the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission.

To ensure even better service delivery, there is said to be a high degree of supervision and regulation of the statutory institutions with district and provincial officers visiting every quarter as well as additional visits from officers from the Children’s Department, according to Mr Hussein.

However, scratch beneath the surface and all is not as it should be.
John says the scenario at Nairobi Children’s Home is a far cry from that described by Mr Hassan.
Having worked in both private and government-run institutions, he found that “private institutions are better run because there is more passion for the job at hand”.
He says private institutions generally seemed to care more about the children in their care. He illustrates this by pointing at the diet of children at government-run institutions.
A child officer of Nairobi Children’s Home, Jane Njoki Munuhe said “mostly we give them rice, beans, ndengu, ugali, a lot of vegetables, potatoes… at least when it comes to the diet, we don’t have a problem with that”.

This was reinforced by Mr Hussein who claimed that the “children are fed well” and you’ll even see them eating “mashed potatoes and fruits”.
But John and a former volunteer at the Nairobi Children’s Home who we shall call Mary* beg to differ.

John said he was greatly bothered by the poor diet at government-run institutions.

During his time at the home, he said, “the diet consisted of beans and ugali, rice and ugali, beans and ugali, and maybe in between you’ll get cabbage and ugali”.

Mary, who was a volunteer at the home for just over three months, was equally concerned about the poor diet.
Though John did say that fruit was occasionally given to the children, Mary said it was “never on the menu of the children’s home” and was donated by well-wishers during her time there.

“If nutrition was not an issue, then the quantity of food was, and the children were almost always hungry,” Mary said.
Donation register

This is surprising considering the Department of Children’s Services’ billion plus expenditure, yet it appears to be true.
The amount allocated for food and rations is Sh79.7 million per annum, which breaks down to approximately Sh100 a day per child. With the rising cost of living, this is inadequate.
However, food and clothing donations to these institutions by well-wishers go some way towards alleviating some of the problems.
Munuhe, the child officer, said they had a donation register at Nairobi Children’s Home.

“Everybody who donates something must write down what they brought, who they are and they also leave their contact details,” she says.

However, John, who worked at the home, says “sometimes donors ask the managers what they need. They may ask for rice and are given the money to buy it… but where does that money go? It goes into their pockets.”

This kind of misconduct could be blamed on the poor salaries that workers, both at government and non-government institutions, take home.

The budget allocated to the 13 rehabilitation centres and rescue homes indicates that the total salaries for workers at these institutions is Sh64 million per annum.
Roughly divided, this puts yearly salaries at Sh5 million per institution.

Nairobi Children’s Home, for example, employs 25 government and 23 non-government workers. This brings the total to 48, excluding temporary workers.
This would mean that even if salaries were to be divided equally, which they most certainly are not, every worker would earn an average Sh104,166 every year.
John said this was a serious problem as it resulted in a lack of motivation to give proper care to the children.
He says this resulted in disappearing resources, including clothes and toys, and lack of proper hygiene and sanitation.
John told how visitors donated vitamin supplements but as soon as they left, no-one would bother to distribute them.

“Sometimes the vitamins would be stolen,” he says.

He says the children are neglected and some volunteers who come to the centre “sometimes break down and cry because these kids are living in such appalling conditions,” says John.

When Mary volunteered to do some work at the home, she says she also encountered this lack of care.

“At the time, approximately 20 children were infected with scabies and 10 with tapeworm,” she says.

Tapeworm eggs are usually ingested through food, water or soil contaminated with faeces or can occur as a result of eating under-cooked meat, though the children rarely get any at the home’s dinner table.

Each of the homes has a nurse on site to deal with such cases and women who care for the children on a 24-hour rotational basis called “mothers”.

However, during this incident, it was the volunteers who took the initiative to treat the tapeworm and alert the nurse of the scabies outbreak, despite the fact that every morning the nurse does her rounds, checking if there are any cases that require medical attention.
Mary says she witnessed the children trying to hide their ailments from the nurse in fear.
John explains that this is because some of the nurses are not trained to work with children and are quite rough with them.
He also blames this on the huge workload that is often too much for one person to handle.

“Every time there’s an emergency she’s either not there or she’s too tired,” he says.

The new Kenyan Constitution, which was promulgated on August 27, 2010, has a comprehensive Bill of Rights, which sets out the rights of children.

It stipulates that the government is bound to deliver healthcare, education, nutrition and shelter to all children irrespective of budgetary implications.

The children’s education at these institutions is also cause for great concern.
Most of the children are taught at their respective institutions or if they are lucky, sponsors will support a particular child to attend a private school.

But despite the Free Primary Education scheme, the provision of government teachers and the ability to hire additional teachers if necessary, educating children at the centres poses a major problem.
In the case of remand centres and rescue homes, the children’s stay is meant to be temporary.

This means that those who are in transition will have received a disjointed education, and the limited number of teachers means that the quality of education they receive is below average.
Thika Boys Rescue Centre is a case in point. The centre, which caters for about 100 children, has only six teachers.

At Nairobi Children’s Home, one teacher takes care of the 50 children.

Deaf and dumb woman

In fact, Munuhe says, what they teach “is not the formal education that is offered in other schools”. She say they are offering “early childhood education” despite having several seven-year-olds at the home.

As for those that require special education, Nairobi Children’s Home has an expert who comes in “twice a week,” says Jane.

For the 22-year-old deaf and dumb woman who has lived there most of her life, she “hasn’t gone to school but was taken to a vocational training centre where she did some tailoring,” adds Jane.

It appears that the biggest problem facing these homes is the lack of resources for specific institutions.

Rescue centres, for example, are almost invisible and do not even get a mention in the Department of Children’s budget.

They are lumped together with “rehabilitation schools” though they need specific items, such as nappies.

For a Sh1 billion plus budget that should put the needs of the children first, this is of grave concern.
The government has 1,916 children directly under its care. These are not children who fall under the orphaned and vulnerable children schemes or live in charitable children’s institutions. They live in the statutory system.

One would expect the needs of these children to be catered for at a reasonable level.

*Names changed to protect the identity of the sources.