Health crises, social support, and caregiving practices among street children in Bangladesh

An estimated 1–3 million children live on the streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh relying on each other for survival in an environment characterized by illness, violence, and poverty. Research has rarely examined the everyday caregiving environment of street children in Bangladesh or how they survive the illness and injury so common to their experience. To understand street children's caregiving practices, this paper draws in part from the informal caregiving and social support literatures. The qualitative project purposively selected 75 street children and asked three primary questions: 1) What is the nature of crisis children encounter on the street? 2) What are the ranges of informal caregiving practices? 3) What social network characteristics facilitate or complicate caregiving? Findings suggest that street children encounter unprecedented dangers and experience frequent accidental injuries and repeated episodes of sickness. They rely mostly on social network members for a range of supports. Network members, primarily peers, help devise a treatment plan, accompany them to treatment centers, buy medicine and nurse sick youth. Network members bear most treatment, food and other expenses and usually do not expect immediate repayment. Street children offer support to close and weak network ties, however support is more intense for friends. Caregivers also struggle to balance their own life and work while engaged in caregiving practices with evidence of detrimental effects on friendship ties in some cases.