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Abstract
“I go to the hospital with my mother when she is sick. I can’t go to school and leave her in so much pain. I won’t concentrate.” Millions of adolescents live with AIDS-affected parents or primary caregivers. Little is known about educational impacts of living in an AIDS-affected home, or of acting as a “young carer” in the context of AIDS. This study combined qualitative and quantitative methods to determine educational impacts of household AIDS-sickness and other-sickness. Six hundred and fifty-nine adolescents (aged 10-20) were interviewed in high-poverty areas of urban and rural South Africa. Qualitative findings identified three major themes of missing school, being hungry at school, and concentration problems due to worry about the sick person. In quantitative analyses, living in an AIDS-affected home predicted all these three outcomes (p < .001) compared to homes affected by other sickness and to healthy homes, and independent of sociodemographic cofactors. This study demonstrates that familial AIDS-sickness is associated with negative educational impacts for adolescents. It is important that policies are developed to support young people in these circumstances to continue with their education.
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Bios
L. Cluver is a university lecturer at Oxford University, an honorary lecturer at the University of Cape Town, and a social worker at Cape Town Child Welfare. Her work focuses on the impacts on children and adolescents of parental AIDS-sickness and death. She works closely with the South African government to develop evidence-based policy for AIDS-affected children.
D. Operario is an associate professor at Brown University. He conducts research with marginalized AIDS-affected groups in sub-Saharan Africa, China, and the United States.
T. Lane is a doctoral student at Oxford University. His research investigates the extent and types of work which children undertake when family members become unwell with HIV/AIDS.
M. Kganakga is the Chief Director of the HIV/AIDS Division at South Africa’s National Department of Social Development. She is a member of the South African National AIDS Council and has led many major policy and research programmes, including a national surveillance system for orphaned children. Dr Kganakga was previously the HIV/AIDS program manager for the Nelson Mandela Children’s Foundation, and Head of Department and Associate Professor of Nursing at the Medical University of South Africa. Her PhD, in 2003, focused on home-based palliative care for people living with HIV and AIDS.
