The need for guidance and counselling in children's homes in the city of Nairobi, Kenya

Abstract

The goal of the children's homes is to provide shelter, food, clothing and education to orphaned children and other categories of needy children. The children's homes personnel ensure that the above basic needs are satisfactorily met. Despite the fact that these needs are met, some of the children living in the homes, portray negative interpersonal relationship, behaviour problems among others. The researcher wishes therefore to research into what social, psychological and academic problems, which hinder the growth of these children and provide intervention measures through guidance and counselling to enable these children fully function in their lives and the entire society. The theoretical framework of literature review, which will be used, is as follows: - (i) The behavioural learning theories mainly: - Classical conditioning, operant conditioning, social learning theory/ social cognitive theory. (ii) Motivation theory: - Maslow hierarchy of needs (iii) Phenomenological theories in general. Through guidance and counselling the researcher will use the above mentioned theories as a frame of reference in the mitigation measures of the problems faced by children living in children's homes. The research findings will be useful to the educational stakeholders such as M.O.E, teachers and Children's homes personnel. The findings will also add to existing knowledge of guidance and counselling. The descriptive survey design will be used in the project. The research instruments to be employed are questionnaires and an interview schedule. To analyse the data collected, descriptive statistics will be used mainly percentages, means, pie chart, bar graphs etc