Analysis of civil society organizations social service studies for street children: Istanbul case

The aim of this research is to examine the services offered by Civil Society Organizations to solve the problems of street children. Within the scope of the research, it was examined how civil society organizations interpret the street child phenomenon and the role of civil society in the face of the problem of street children, the problems faced by non-governmental organizations in providing services and their suggestions for the solution of these problems In this research, which is applied to qualitative research method, phenomenological approach which is frequently applied in social sciences has been applied as research design. A semi-structured questionnaire was used as the data collection method. The questionnaire was administered face-to-face to the managers of ten non-governmental organizations, which were reached through purposeful sampling and snowball sampling, respectively. The interviews were recorded with the approval of the participants; interview records were analyzed by descriptive analysis method. In the study, the activity reports of the non-governmental organizations, the project outputs and the written materials such as magazines, bulletins, etc. were also used as data sources. In this study, it was seen that CSOs explained the problem of street children with migration, urban poverty and parental attitude and concentrated their services on the solution of problems in these areas. In the study, it was found that CSOs, on the grounds that they do not have the necessary expertise and facilities, could not provide services other than advocacy activities to the children who adopted the street as living area, instead they provided services for children who were working on the street or who were at risk of being dragged into the street due to the conditions. The services offered by CSOs are protective-preventive studies and rehabilitative / curative services, including training support services, psychosocial support services, family support services and advocacy activities. It was concluded that CSOs experienced economic problems, the problem of employing expert personnel, information and data problems and cooperation problems among actors.