May 2003

Succession Planning in Uganda:
Early Outreach for AIDS-affected
Children and Their Families

Conclusions

Boy in Luwero with his maternal and paternal grandmothers who share responsibility for his care Photo credit: Laelia Gilborn, Horizons/Population Council

Findings from this study suggest that succession planning is a promising approach for increasing the extent to which HIV-positive parents take action to ensure a better future for their children, particularly in terms of appointing guardians and talking to their children about being HIV-positive.

Some aspects of the program, however, require strengthening or adaptation. There is a need to build support among community leaders and members for the protection of women and children’s inherited property and the use of written wills or an alternative mechanism to do so. More opportunities should be created for the participation of standby guardians in the entire SP program. Some parents in the program were offered income-generation activities, and there is room to expand this to standby guardians. Collaborative income-generating projects involving HIV-positive parents, children, and standby guardians would allow for bonding between children and future guardians and would provide the guardian with an ongoing source of income and thus an incentive and means to take care of the children in the future.

Ways of including distant standby guardians should also be explored. Many city dwellers return to their villages occasionally. Activities could be arranged during these visits. Program activities for children could be enriched. Most important, children need ongoing emotional support during the process of parent-to-child disclosure.

In general, there is a need to increase participation in the program by the community at large, by local leaders, and by men, who for cultural and other reasons have shown less interest in the program, either as parents or standby guardians.

Notes

• NS = Not statistically significant
• Baseline data presented in this summary may differ slightly from those reported in the Baseline Report (Gilborn, et al. 2000). This is because a subset of the full sample was used to analyze the impact of SP, while the baseline report presented data from the full sample.
• The full study included three rounds of interviews at annual intervals (1999, 2000, 2001). Only the first and final round of data were used for the current analysis. The full study included three study arms in 1999 and 2000 (Succession Planning, Orphan Support, and control). In each arm, the sample included parents, children, standby guardians, children currently orphaned, and their grandparents. The control group was eliminated for ethical reasons in 2001, to allow Plan Uganda to begin offering services in that area. Thus only the SP and OS arms were included in 2001 and could be used for the current analysis of 1999 and 2001 data. In the absence of the "true control" group, a comparison group was derived as follows for the current analysis: parents, children and standby guardians in the OS arm who were not receiving OS (because there were no orphans in the household) or SP (because it was not being offered in that area). Since they were not receiving either intervention, they were used in this analysis as the comparison group.

Table of Contents | Next > 

	Print this page
@	E-mail this page

This page updated
19 October 2007