Psychosocial Educational Programme to Facilitate the Reintegration of Incarcerated Women Dumped Babies or Committed Infanticide

Purpose:

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.

 Baby dumping and infanticide have become social phenomena with grave 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 releases, hence the need for a psychosocial educational programme to facilitate their reintegration

Methods:

The study was qualitative, explorative, descriptive, and contextual in nature and was conducted in four phases. the ethical measures were consideredin terms of applying the  fundamentaethical principle of respects, beneficenceand justice. Trustworthiness were described in terms of the credibility, transferability, dependability, confirmability, and authenticity of the research project

 Results:

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 and focus group discussions.  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 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 evaluated in order to validate whether the programme interventions were likely to bring about the desired change among the participants.

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 socio-economic destitutions. These women find themselves incarcerated as a consequence of the atrocious acts they have committed while they fear the reintegration with their families and communities as result of rejection.  However, an educational 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.