Improving Childrens’ Holiday Care Arrangements

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After several years of ongoing work by African LEAF, the 2009/2010 Christmas & New Year vacation period finally saw all necessary arrangements in place so that every LEAF sponsored child was able to stay with and be cared for over the holidays by their extended families or family friends.

In previous years, some of the children’s extended families were able to take care of them over the holidays but many were not – particularly where the cost of travel from Nairobi or relatives general living conditions such as lack of sleeping space and extreme poverty prevented it. This meant that LEAF had to make special arrangements for those children every term holidays, including sometimes paying additional staff to remain at the Farm School to care for the children and at other times having them ‘boarded-out’ with qualified child carers or families of their friends at school who were willing and able to accommodate them.

Each of these obstacles has now been gradually overcome after taking into account numerous recommendations made by a social worker who was engaged by LEAF to investigate and report on the circumstances of each child and their extended families. In some cases the children are now being happily cared for by the families of one of their friends at the Farm School and in most instances relatives and friends are paid a weekly contribution by African LEAF to help cover costs of travel from and back to the school as well as food and general living costs during their stay.

In one case, a grandmother who lived ‘up country’ many hours’ drive from Nairobi and who was already caring for several other grandchildren of her deceased children, was willing to take the two other LEAF-sponsored grandchildren over holidays but was unable to as she lived in a very small hut in which she and three of the other grandchildren shared 2 single beds, so there simply wasn’t enough sleeping space let alone food or money to adequately feed them all. After a home visit by LEAF with the social worker, arrangements were made for the two decrepit and decaying single beds to be replaced by a new double bed (for the grandma) and king-size single double bunk beds (each of which can comfortably sleep 2 children) including new mattresses, sheets, blankets and pillows. Now, with the added help of the weekly allowance, these children are happily returning to the grandmother each holiday and are being well cared for and reunited with their cousins.