female education for achieving sustainable development is now widely recognised and it is imperative that this is embraced by all.
According to the 2010 Population and Housing Census, females constitute more than fifty one percent of the entire Ghanaian population, therefore education should be a prerequisite for them to be able to significantly contribute to the development aspirations of Ghana. However, in their efforts to move higher to attain their ambitions they are faced with a wide range of challenges such as psychological, emotional, financial and social needs. These numerous challenges make them vulnerable, requiring additional levels of support, guidance and advice to motivate young girls achieve their potential (Unterhalter, 2013).
It has been the case that senior secondary education in Ghana is largely delivered through boarding provision for young people aged from about 15-18 years (although in many cases children can be younger or older). Boarding schools in Ghana come in a variety of forms and can be single gender or mixed genders; secular or faith-based; government or private; large, medium or small. They can also be in rural, urban or peri-urban (on the outskirts of an urban area) sites, requiring significant travel for many children and young people. This diversity makes it difficult to achieve any standardised or systematic approach to protecting and safeguarding children and young people in these situations. For example, a faith-based secondary school may include religious programmes in their curricula and extra-curricular timetable. They may also have different ways of disciplining children and of engaging with their families.
According to Ajayi (2013), there are approximately 700 secondary schools in Ghana, however not all offer boarding provision.
As a response to some of the above challenges, the authors came together to design and implement a project in a Girls Senior High School (a government-assisted school) following approval from the Ministry of Education and cooperation from the school management in 2014. The Sunflower Project was aimed at enhancing the attainment of girls through the provision of social work services in schools. This was the first of its kind in Ghana and yielded benefits for the girls in the project school. The project offered the services of an onsite qualified social worker who provided various forms of support to the girls such as: signposting, advice and guidance within the school. Areas of intervention included: online safety, protective behaviour work, negotiating financial support, home-school liaison, anti-bullying strategies and groupwork.
These areas of intervention and others will be discussed in depth later in the book. We will outline the development of the project from inception to implementation and examine the strengths of the project and challenges faced during the pilot phase. The aim will be to share cultural and other factors which were considered in the development of this project and to highlight key areas where culturally-relevant approaches to social work intervention were used. An examination of child protection and welfare from a Ghanaian perspective will be highlighted and good practice shared.
The authors argue in this book that social work has a place in secondary schools more generally and in boarding secondary schools in particular. To emphasise this point, we subscribe to the following definition of child protection recently used by the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection. It states that:
“Child Protection seeks to guarantee the right of all children to a life free from violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect. The many actors engaged in child protection include children and youth, families, communities, government, civil society and private organisations.” (MoGCSP, 2014: iv).
Such a definition in our view commits staff and leadership at boarding secondary schools to actively promote and support the rights of children whilst ensuring abuse, in all its forms and in all areas of a child’s life is disrupted and eliminated.
What have you learned from this chapter?
What did you know before?
Chapter 2Methodology
In considering the most appropriate method of gaining the kind of knowledge we felt was important for this book, we recognised the value of qualitative data as providing the opportunity to understand the challenges and opportunities involved in embedding child protection systems and processes into boarding secondary schools in Ghana. It was felt that a blend of document analysis, our own evaluation findings and the use of existing peer-reviewed research would best inform our conclusions.
Document analysis, according to Bowen (2009) is a form of qualitative research in which documents are interpreted by the researcher to give voice and meaning to a particular topic. It is a cost-effective method however it requires careful planning and can be time-consuming. We used government reports and documents from NGOs and INGOs, position papers and UN reports to assist us with grounding our findings and conclusions.
The other source of information for our book came from our Sunflower project in the form of internal reports, work summaries and final evaluation report.
Program evaluation, according to Cook (2014, p108) is ’generally viewed as a set of mechanisms for collecting and using information to learn about projects, policies, and programs, to understand their effects, both intended and unintended as well as the manner in which they are implemented‘. Throughout the 2-year pilot phase, the social worker provided monthly updates and comprehensive quarterly reports which were used for monitoring purposes. The evaluation at the end of the project provided a more in-depth analysis of the project; its strengths, limitations and future direction.
Existing peer-reviewed research, policy and legislation as well as some ‘grey’ literature produced by government departments, non-governmental and international organisations were used. Grey literature refers to work that is unpublished and can include materials such as ‘unpublished studies, conference abstracts, conference proceedings, book chapters, government and agency reports, as well as unpublished doctoral dissertations’ (Bellefontaine and Lee 2014, p1379).
We found relevant academic journals in the area of Education and Educational Development as particularly useful. Small-scale research findings assisted us in developing our argument. In addition, relevant social work journal articles were sourced.
Methodologically then, this book is a culmination of secondary research as it is a collation of existing research and did not involve direct data collection from research participants. Secondary data analysis offers the opportunity for a researcher to analyse existing data which has been collected by previous studies into similar areas of interest.
According to Bryman (2012), secondary analysis can have a number of benefits to researchers.
Time and Cost
Secondary analysis offers the possibility to researchers access good quality data in a shorter timescale than the collection of primary data and also in a cost-effective manner. For instance, the designing of questionnaires, fieldwork trips and time spent interviewing and talking to participants is absent in the use of secondary analysis, hence the cost-effectiveness of this method. We also recognised the time required for gaining ethical approval would be saved by using secondary sources.
Reduced Time for Analysing Data
Due to the time-consuming nature of data collection, the analysis stage is usually condensed in order to complete the task at hand. The use of secondary data enables a researcher to spend more time on analysing and making sense of the existing literature.
It is also important to highlight the limitations
