Care leavers’ experiences of COVID-19 in Uganda and Ghana: Implications for their mental health and psychosocial wellbeing

Abstract

In Ghana and Uganda, two low-income sub-Saharan African countries, an increasing number of young people leave residential care each year to begin life on their own in the wider society. The increase in young people making their transitions to adulthood from care contexts because, in both countries, many children live outside without parental care because of a complex and interrelated set of socioeconomic factors, consisting of poverty, orphanhood, abandonment, and detrimental cultural practices (Casey, 2011; Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Development, and UNICEF Uganda, 2015). In Ghana, children under 18 make up 45% of the population of 25,904,600. Despite economic growth and peaceful political environment, a third of the populace live below the poverty line and food insecurity, with Ghana, ranked 142/189 on the United Nations Human Development Index (Better Care Network & UNICEF, 2015).