Models of care for orphaned and separated children and upholding children’s rights: cross-sectional evidence from western Kenya

Abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to approximately 55 million orphaned children. The growing orphan crisishas overwhelmed many communities and has weakened the ability of extended families to meet traditionalcare-taking expectations. Other models of care and support have emerged in sub-Saharan Africa to address the growing orphan crisis, yet there is a lack of information on these models available in the literature. We applied a human rights framework using the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to understand what extent children’s basic human rights were being upheld in institutional vs. community- or family-based care settingsin Uasin Gishu County, Kenya.