Physical Violence Against Street Children and Its Associated Factors Among Street Children in Jimma Town, Southwest Ethiopia :- A Community Based Cross-Sectional

Background: Violence against children is a major public health, human rights, and social problem, with potentially devastating and costly harming children in every country. Even though evidences showed that street children accumulate a range of experiences of violence from an early age, physical and sexual violence are the commonest among street children. Street children’s health is an area that is not well researched, especially the magnitude and forms of violence targeted to street children lack attention, in which only few qualitative studies have been done in different parts of Ethiopia in past remote years. Therefore, this study planned to determine the magnitude of physical violence and associated factors among street children, who were residing in Jimma town, March, 2019. Methods: A community based cross-sectional study was conducted among 312 street children. Pre tested Self-administered structured questioners were used for data collection. Data were entered to Epi data version 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 20 for statistical analysis. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to create a dichotomous dependent variable. Independent variables with p-value ≤ 0.25 in bivariate analysis were included into multivariable logistic regression and variables with P-value < 0.05 in multivariable logistic regression were declared as statistically significant.Results: A community based cross-sectional study was conducted among 312 street children from March 1 st to 31 st 2019. The study found that the magnitude of low physical violence to be 52.9% (95% C.I: 47.1- 58.7%) and high physical violence 47.1% (95% C.I: 41.3-52.9%). Factors like sex (being males) (AOR: 2.70, 95% C.I: 1.00- 7.36), sleeping under bridge (AOR: 2.08, 95%C.I: 1.11-3.89), deliver message (AOR: 2.43, 95%C.I: 1.20- 4.93), attending/washing cars (AOR: 2.17, 95%C.I: 1.22- 3.93), and begging (AOR: 3.12: 95%C.I: 1.33- 7.27) as a means of income generation and those who were tensioned, anxious or feel insecure during their street life (AOR: 1.90, 95%C.I: 1.03- 3.51) had statistically significant association with low physical violence. Being female (AOR: 2.82, 95%C.I: 1.01- 8.06) was statistically associated with high physical violence whereas factors like spent night under plastic shelter (AOR: 2.36, 95%C.I: 1.02- 5.46), spent night under bridge (AOR: 0.47, 95%C.I: 0.25- 0.89), can read and write (AOR: 0.11, 95%C.I: 0.03- 0.41), Attended/ washed cars(AOR: 0.48, 95%C.I: 0.27- 0.88) and begging (AOR: 0.40, 95%C.I: 0.17-0.96) pose less risk of having high physical violence.Conclusion: Street children are experiencing low to high physical violence and a number of factors are contributing to this problem in the study setting. Intersectoral collaboration and efforts are needed to alleviate physical violence among street children. Policy formulation and law enforcement targeting to this street children and perpetrator is needed locally and nationally.