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International child welfare: deconstructing UNICEF's Country Programmes
- Author:
- LAIRD Siobhan
- Journal article citation:
- Social Policy and Society, 4(4), October 2005, pp.457-466.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
There has been exhaustive scrutiny of the policies of the Bretton Woods institutions and the United Nations Population Fund. UNICEF, despite a prominent role in agenda setting for children's welfare in developing countries, has not been subject to comparable scrutiny. This paper argues that the Country Programmes promulgated by UNICEF to improve children's welfare reflect ethnocentric conceptualisations of the family. As a case study, Ghana's Country Programme 2001–2005 is considered in detail. Anthropological studies are adduced to highlight underlying ethnocentric assumptions around social organisation. The ramifications of these assumptions are then considered.
Social work with children and families in Ghana: negotiating tradition and modernity
- Author:
- LAIRD Siobhan E.
- Journal article citation:
- Child and Family Social Work, 16(4), November 2011, pp.434-443.
- Publisher:
- Wiley
Social workers in Ghana are confronted with a different set of challenges to those in North America and Europe. Ghana is a poly-ethnic nation comprising a multitude of different indigenous cultural practices and a modern urban sector largely divorced from a rural population adhering to customary law. This study explores how Ghanaian practitioners negotiate the contradictions between child welfare legislation and customary law. Data were gathered from semi-structured interviews with 36 qualified social workers employed by the Department of Social Welfare and the transcripts were thematically analysed. The findings are discussed in the areas of: paternity and inheritance; maintenance of children; and custody of children. The study found that legislative provision normalises nuclear family forms and runs counter to customary law. Statutes which take no account of widely practiced family forms and traditions place social workers in an invidious position whereby they can neither sanction customary standards of behaviour nor implement legal provisions without contravening their code of practice to respect culture diversity. Recommendations are made for social changes to policy, practice and training in order to develop cultural competence in Ghanaian social work.
Polygynous marital structure and child survivorship in sub-Saharan Africa: some empirical evidence from Ghana
- Author:
- GYIMAH Stephen Obeng
- Journal article citation:
- Social Science and Medicine, 68(2), January 2009, pp.334-342.
- Publisher:
- Elsevier
Although studies have found children in married families to have better health outcomes than those in other family types, this strand of research implicitly views marriage as monolithic and, by default, monogamous as found in western industrialized societies. In polygynous cultures, there is a need to make a distinction between polygynous and monogamous families, because these marital
Coping with old age in a changing Africa: social change and the elderly Ghanaian
- Author:
- APT Nana Araba
- Publisher:
- Avebury
- Publication year:
- 1996
- Pagination:
- 172p.,bibliog.
- Place of publication:
- Aldershot
Looks at changes in society in Africa which could lead to a similar crisis in caring for older people to that taking place in the developed nations. Includes chapters on: Ghanaian traditions of kin, clan and informal caring systems; the increasing burden on older people of social change; coping with old age in the new Ghanaian cultural context; portraits of ageing; and an appropriate age care system for Africa.
Understanding the carers' experience: examples from a Ghanaian context
- Authors:
- QUINN Neil, EVANS Tony
- Journal article citation:
- International Social Work, 53(1), January 2010, pp.62-72.
- Publisher:
- Sage
Informal carers play a key role in mental health care. This article draws on the work of Goffman to analyse the experiences of carers in Ghana. The findings illustrate the complex nature of caring and the need to develop social work practice that acknowledges the social context of carers’ reality.
Intergenerational cultural transmission among the Akan of Ghana
- Authors:
- ADJAYE Joseph K., ABORAMPAH Osei-Mensah
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Intergenerational Relationships, 2(3/4), 2004, pp.23-38.
- Publisher:
- Routledge
- Place of publication:
- Philadelphia
Sociocultural transmission is a necessary ingredient in societal stability, cohesion, and continuity everywhere. For the Akan of central and southern Ghana, an important aspect of societal cohesion occurred through intergenerational solidarity which existed principally in the extended family, with the elders acting as the primary instruments in cultural transmission. The extended family, especially as represented in the Akan traditional household, was regarded as one family. Elders were viewed as the embodiment of the past as well as members with the largest store of memories from the past. Reminiscences, remembrances, and oral narratives were passed down to children in whose lives these elders were intimately involved, and stories always contained some moral values that children were expected to learn from and apply. What appears to be occurring in contemporary Ghana are processes of change and persistence, and the task of this study is to assess changes in the Akan family, particularly the extended family, and their impact on the transmission of cultural values across generations. (Copies of this article are available from: Haworth Document Delivery Centre, Haworth Press Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580)