Abstract
Most children in institutional care have gone through difficult backgrounds which brew various psychosocial issues they grapple with while in institutional care. This paper focuses on the psychosocial issues presented by children in institutional care based on a study that was carried out with managers from four child care institutions. The study adopted Bowlby’s Attachment Theory and Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory to explain the causes of psychosocial issues experienced by institutionalised children. Purposive sampling was used to select a manager from each of the four child care institutions and one director from the Department of Social Services. These key informants participated in in-depth interviews that were conducted to collect data. The study used a qualitative research methodology and multiple case study design to analyse the psychosocial needs presented by children in institutional care. In this regard, the following psychosocial issues emerged from the study: need for love, incidents of undesirable behaviours or character traits such as petty thefts, aggression provoked or unprovoked, feeling of rejection, lack of confidence, hatred towards oneself, others or the world as responsible for one’s plight, bullying, anger, fear, ungratefulness and general stigma from the community. Furthermore, the study analysed psychosocial support interventions available in institutions that are designed to help children to deal with the aforementioned psychosocial issues. Lastly the paper seeks to offer suggestions on what could possibly be done to address the identified psychosocial issues in child care institutions.
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