OVC Support Toolkit  >  Psychosocial support  >  Psychosocial Responses 

Succession Planning

This section looks at the issue of succession planning. Succession planning is planning for what will happen to children and young people after their parents have died. Other sections look in detail at counselling, training in psychosocial support and examples of psychosocial responses.

Key points about succession planning are:

1. There are many problems when a parent dies. These are worse if there has been no planning.

2. There are many reasons why succession planning does not happen in developing countries.

3. Responses which focus on encouraging succession planning use a variety of methods, including the use of memory books and boxes.

4. Benefits of succession planning projects include increased appointment of guardians, improved disclosure of positive HIV test results to children and increased use of wills.

Problems of Poor Planning

There are many problems when a parent dies. These are worse if there has been no planning. These problems include:

• Children and young people not understanding what has happened or what will happen to them
• Adults being unclear as to who will care for the children and act as their guardian
• Property being taken by relatives and others

Barriers to Succession Planning

There are many reasons why succession planning does not happen in developing countries. For example, wills can be a key tool in this planning. However, people rarely write wills in some developing countries. Reasons for this include:

• Belief that writing wills and preparing for death can cause death.
• The tradition that property is only distributed after death by senior people within the extended family.
• The tradition that women and young children can not inherit property.
• The tradition that wills are verbal not written.
• Limited knowledge and enforcement of laws.
• Limited literacy.
• Limited experience with legal issues among NGOs in rural areas.

Responses to Encourage Succession Planning

Projects may seek to encourage succession planning in a number of different ways, including:

• Counselling HIV positive parents regarding telling their children about their test results.
• Creating memory books or boxes. These consist of a book or box which describes and remembers a person?s life. They may focus on specific events or periods within a person?s life. These are called ?windows?. These windows may be organized around a particular theme or ?plot?. Memory boxes may be used to hold important documents, such as birth certificates and wills.
• Support to appoint a standby guardian. This person will take on the responsibilities of a parent for a child if the parent is no longer able to do this.
• Training of guardians.
• Education on legal matters including practical support to write wills.
• Assistance with school fees and supplies.
• Training in ways of generating income and funds to get activities started.
• Community sensitization on needs of AIDS-affected children. This forms part of the activities described under local advocacy.

The importance of succession planning

The global strategic framework introduced in 2004 identifies strengthening the capacity of families to protect and care for children as one of five key strategies. Succession planning is seen as part of that strategy.

Benefits

Projects which promote succession planning have had several benefits. These include:

• An increase in the number of guardians appointed before a parent dies
• An increase in the number of parents who tell their children the results of their HIV test. This is particularly true where those children are over the age of 12 years
• An increase in the number of wills written. However, in a project in Uganda the number of people who wrote wills remained very low, although it rose considerably from the level when the project started.

Experience has shown that a project has benefits beyond the area in which it operates. This is because people within the project area share the benefits with those outside the area.

• Send to a friend
• Printer-friendly
• Introductions to themes (pdf)