Persistent failure to meet a child’s basic physical or psychological needs that is likely to result into serious impairment of a child’s health or development is referred to as child neglect (Bovarnick, 2007). Child neglect refers to failure to provide children’s fundamental needs (Sudiyanto, 2018). The United Nations defines a child as any human being below the age of 18 years. Children equally contribute to the moral wellbeing of the society and thus require adequate care which includes among others, education, training and socialization in the environment. (National child
right’s committee 1999). However, in spite of the importance and contribution of children to society, millions of children are neglected by their parents, caregivers and the community.
In Uganda, the current strategies that are being employed to reduce cases of child abuse and neglect seem not to be working efficiently as expected. The strategies are based on guidelines that are more academic and make little sense to parents they are trying to educate because they lack the social context within which child neglect and abuse occurs. African communities believe by seeing from the person teaching them. If the person coming as a teacher to a particular community represents another cultural ideology, parents will see him/her as a bad influence who cannot be listened to (Ejuu, 2015). The abuse is in part blamed on parents who are entering family life ill prepared to raise children while maintaining an exclusive life oblivious of a supportive community around them.
Use of law enforcement to bring some of the abuse perpetrators to justice also seem not be working to meet the expectations of the public. The exploration team used data from the Bantwana KAP survey 2019 and Routine Monitoring for case management dataset, which showed that child neglect was a predominant issue affecting children in Kyenjojo, Kabarole and Bunyangabu. A Further detailed analysis of the data showed that the biggest factor around child neglect was parental and caregiver refusal (intentionally) to provide basic necessities to their children even when they can afford. Basic needs are generally defined in terms of a minimal list of elements that human beings necessitate in order to fulfil basic requirements and achieve a decent life. Typically, the list includes basic commodities such as food, shelter, clothing, drinking water, sanitation, education health care and public transportation, participation, self-reliance, autonomy and self-expression.
While the factors that contribute to refusal by parents and caregivers to provide basic necessities to their children were fairly known, there was an evident gap on the knowledge of community norms, beliefs and attitudes that encourage parents to refuse to provide these needs, hence the social norms exploration (SNE).
