Last Friday, Kasarani children’s office, which covers the area of Mathare, turned up at the Rescue Centre with two five year olds, a six week old and an older baby that they wanted to give us. The government department are in the process of shutting down a children’s home near to us that is so poorly funded and so badly managed that four children have died in the past few months. We begged and pleaded with the Children’s Officer that we could not take the children as Mogra Rescue Centre is overcrowded, broke and does not have the staff or facilities for babies.
They pleaded back and we ended up keeping the older baby. She is called Angel and she is fourteen months old. Her hair had been braided by the older children, but she was covered in sores from untreated nappy rash and the dirt was so ingrained that her skin had become pulled tight and broken. She can’t move, but she has a smile for everyone.
This other children’s home, we shall call it the ‘Silver Shepherd’ was opened by an independent Kenyan church. Initially it had money and support and was doing well, but it lacked any planning and any structure. There were two pastors in charge, one went to the USA to fundraise. He did well at first, so the second pastor went up country to open a second Silver Shepherd Children’s Home in rural Kenya. After a while though, support in the US dried up and the Pastor based out there had to feed himself and support his own family, so he spent more time working and less time fundraising. The other pastor in the countryside was kept very busy with the second project and washed his hands of the first. So the Silver Shepherd Children’s home was run into the ground. Staff weren’t paid and didn’t turn up for work. Nappies didn’t get changed, clothes didn’t get washed and food didn’t get cooked. The four children who died, died of simple infections; they were dirty, malnourished, and never got to see a nurse.
In the meantime Kasarani Children’s Department is kept very busy; it covers Mathare and many other slum areas of Nairobi and has an average of thirty referrals every day. This is 30 children who need residential care, it could be because they are orphaned, abandoned or simply so abused and neglected by their parents that they cannot live at home for their own safety. Often, Tom, the Children’s officer can deal with it ‘informally’; he can find a Mama who will take the child in and care for it whilst they follow up the case. Tom does not know exactly how many Mamas he has like this, but it is in the hundreds. He says that every single person working in their office has at least three rescued children at home; simply there was nowhere else for that child to go at the end of the day.
How easy is it to turn a child away? How does it feel to know that you, yet another adult has failed that child? Silver Shepherd should be a wake up call for us: our children are fed and clothed, yes, but we only have four staff and none have had a break for over two years. We have 132 children, just enough to pay the bills. No spare to employ a nurse, or even for trips to the clinic. And we are still really struggling to implement any structure.
The Children’s Office knows all this, yet they are still calling us about that six week old as the baby has nowhere else to go….
