A Study of Shelters for Street Children from an Organizational ...

The challenges of children living and/or working on the streets are multi-dimensional
and the approach to deal with the multiplicity of their problems should be multi­
disciplinary. In this regard, designing, development, and implementation of shelter's
services and programs should take cognisance of the multi-dimensional nature of the
problems. Consequently, the input of shelter's staff, the residents and other professions
e.g. counsellors, psychiatrists, doctors, nurses, teachers, families and community
leaders etc could enrich the design of intervention programs. The South African
Children's Bill amending the Children's Act (2002:138-159) takes cognisance of the
multi-dimensional approach and recognizes the need for shelters to act in tandem with
other institutions of government.
According to the South African Children's Draft Bill (2002), the South African
government ideally would have children re-united with their families or communities as
the first priority and shelters only when that is not possible. The government also
acknowledges that there are circumstances where family bond is unattainable and
therefore, a child needs other forms of care, e.g. children's homes and shelters. The
period of stay is also defined and ranges between 1-6 months and during that time
efforts to locate children's families and communities are in place in order to re-unite
them. However, children argued earlier, in chapter four, that shelters be considerate in
allowing them to stay longer in the shelters and reunification programs be done after
families' or communities' circumstances are stabilized. Consequently and despite the
concerns and fear of dependency, shelters would have more time to work with children
in training and instilling skills, that opens chances for their being employed or self­
employed in the future. Certain skills require more time to teach and learn, and
because they are significant to equip and empower children, shelters needed more
time beyond the six months to one-year limit.
5.3 Shelter's Objectives
Hasenfeld (1983:7) state that human service organisations share similar characteristics
with other bureaucracies in that they are goal-objective oriented, derive their sources
from their environments, and seek to produce a specific set of products to legitimize
and maintain themselves. Shelters objectives were to intervene in children's lives to
redress the circumstances that excluded children from accessing services from society.
In this regard, shelters were minimally organised as organisation to provide services,
and implement programs of intervention and reintegration of children in their care. The
objectives did not state what exactly constituted 'basic needs of children' nor state
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