Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
Shahid Beheshti University
Abstract
Caregivers have a unique role in the development of children, and this becomes even more important when the children living in residential child care facilities are addressed. The present investigation aimed at exploring the caregivers' experiences in taking care of children living in residential child care facilities (RCCF). In this qualitative study (1401), 19 caregivers were selected using maximum variation sampling. Private and public residential child care facilities in Tehran, Iran, were involved in the study. Unstructured interviews on caregivers' experiences in taking caring of children were employed to collect the data. The interviews were recorded, handwritten, and analyzed according to the "Klaizi" method. The obtained categories included drowning in work (subcategories of the spread of awakened parental feelings to all existence and suffering from children's pains), opportunity for growth (subcategories of opportunity for spiritual growth, care as raising children, opportunity for personal growth and taking caregiving seriously), and main categories of problems of upstream systems (subcategories of problems caused by the macro-social system and problems of the welfare organization system) and problems caused by the nature of the work (with subcategories of working with injured children and communication management difficulty). The experiences of caregivers participating in this study indicated that the job of caretaking, especially with such an audience, is a sensitive situation and easily goes beyond the job and involves all aspects of the caregiver's life. Therefore, supporting the caregivers is inevitable.
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