A Psychosocial Educational Program to Facilitate The Reintegration of Incarcerated Women Who Had Dumped Babies And/or Committed Infanticide in Namibia

ABSTRACT

Baby dumping and infanticide have become a social phenomenon with severe consequences that are drawing nationwide attention and condemnation in Namibia. Those women who are perpetrating these heinous acts provide numerous motives; such as fathers denying paternity, unemployment, young mothers who still want to continue with school, as well as a lack of awareness about institutional care, foster homes, and formal adoption. These young incarcerated women before and after having dumped their babies and/or committed infanticide are psychologically and emotionally traumatised. That left them fearful to be reintegrated into the society upon release, hence the need for a psychosocial educational programme to facilitate their reintegration. In this study, the researcher explored and described the views of women who had dumped babies and / or committed infanticide with regard to their experiences with the purpose of developing, implementing, and evaluating an educational programme to facilitate their reintegration upon release with their families and with society in general in the Oshana Region, Namibia. The study was qualitative, explorative, descriptive, and contextual in nature and was conducted in four phases, namely: Phase 1: This phase comprised a situational analysis. It was carried out to explore and describe the lived experiences of women who had dumped and / or committed infanticide. The researcher used in-depth unstructured individual interviews for data collection and data was analysed by using Tech’s method of qualitative data analysis. The findings of this study identified psychological challenges, fear for reintegration, socio-economic challenges, as well as legal and ethical challenges that were iii encountered by women who had dumped babies and / or committed infanticide. These findings led to the development of the psychosocial educational programme to address those challenges. Phase 2: During this phase, the conceptualisation framework guided the development of a psychosocial educational programme that facilitated the reintegration process of women who had dumped and / or committed infanticide. Dickoff, James and Wiedenbach (1968) identify the following three essential ingredients of a conceptual framework; namely, goal content, which is specified as the aim of the activity, prescription of the activity for goal realisation, and a survey list that accompanies the presentation of the prescription for the activity in terms of the goal realisation. The educational programme included the activities suggested in the survey list of Dickoff et al. (1968); namely, agent, recipient, context, dynamics, procedures, and terminus. Phase 3: This phase focused on the development of a psychosocial educational programme to facilitate the reintegration process of women who had dumped their babies and / or committed infanticide. The survey list of Dickoff et al. (1968) was adopted as a reasoning map in the construction of the development of a psychosocial educational programme, as well as the findings of the situational analysis of this study. Phase 4: This phase focused on the implementation and evaluation of the psychosocial educational programme that was developed to facilitate the reintegration of incarcerated women who had dumped babies and / or committed infanticide. A three-day training workshop was held at the Oluno Correctional Facility to conduct the educational programme. The educational programme was iv evaluated in order to validate whether the programme interventions were likely to bring about the desired change among the participants. The evaluation of the programme was conducted immediately after every session and at the end of the training programme. The programme outcomes evaluation was carried out three months after the educational programme had been implemented. The programme participants commented that the programme implementation was useful, as well as informative and educative. Conclusion: The study contributes to the body of knowledge in public health. This study emphasises that the young women who commit heinous crimes of baby dumping and infanticide are often immature and inexperienced leading to situations that force them to make decisions that are not often the best ones. The general insight includes the realisation that most of these young women commit these crimes at the spur of the moment and the root causes are well-known. These root causes include such factors or reason as tradition because some young women fear rejection by their communities or family if they are found to have had a baby outside of marriage. The economic state of the young mothers and their male partners who are denying paternity also contribute to baby dumping cases, since they are not able to raise a baby on their own. As a matter of fact, women who have dumped babies and / committing infanticide are subjected to physical, social and psychological wretchedness, and socioeconomic destitutions. These women find themselves incarcerated as a consequence of the atrocious acts they have committed while they are fearing the reintegration with their families and communities as result of rejection. However, an educational v programme can be effective to facilitate the reintegration of the incarcerated women with the purpose of overcoming their feelings of fear and rejection. In conclusion, the study also highlights the need for research about the challenges of male partners’ responsibilities to accept paternity, since these challenges are one of the major reasons why women dump babies and / or commit infanticide. Recommendations: The study recommends that the findings of the study be used or be incorporated in the curricula for training purposes. The main objective of the Namibian Correctional Services (NCS) is to rehabilitate offenders, and a competent staff complement is a key factor to achieving this objective. Therefore, it is recommended that the Ministry of Safety Security invests more in staff training and development in order to effectively impact the education and the training in the prison system. Another recommendation was for the upgrading of the knowledge of the correctional officers to keep themselves abreast with all correctional educational programmes. Furthermore, these recommendations might decrease recidivism of women who dump babies and / or commit infanticide after they have been released to be reintegrated into the society.