THE EDITOR, Sir:
WHEN SOMETHING happens in Jamaica that captures the attention of the public, we have a tendency to flog it and flog it ad nauseam, until it either dies a natural death or becomes so boring that very few persons, if any, bother with what eventually happens at the end of the story. It is, as we say in Jamaica, nine-day talk.
In my opinion, we are at the flogging-to-death stage of the criticism of children's homes. Suddenly everyone has become an expert at what should and/or should not be done.
A person (even more worthy because she is from "foreign") has adopted a child from one of these homes, a child she has later found out exhibits only what is perhaps the probable behaviour of a dysfunctional child. This has generated a whole pile of allegations against children's homes and/or places of safety in Jamaica. Whether these allegations are true or false does not seem to be the issue here. What seems to be of importance, however, is that any and everybody has now climbed on the bandwagon. At the risk of having the wrath of do-gooders in the country come down on me heavily with every criticism they can find, I am going to make the following statement.
ABANDONED
Children's homes, as far as I am aware, do not go out into the highways and by-ways and "capture" children. They are asked by the Family Court, the Police or the Children's Services Division of the Ministry of Health to take in children who have problems, big problems, who are or have been abandoned or abused by their own families, in their own homes, or have no one else interested in taking on the responsibility of raising them. This is unfortunate but this is the fact. Another fact is: these children are not saints - far from it. Neither are they "sweet little darlings" who have fallen on hard times and who will just fit into our homes and become perfect children overnight when they are given love and material things.
Hello! Do we believe in fairy stories whereby we only have to kiss the frog to have a prince emerge? Will someone get real here? Whether we want to admit it or not, many of these children have been exposed from birth to open sex, to rapes, gun battles, lies, stealing, anti-social behaviour, etc. etc.
So, the children in children's homes are, in many instances, a lot smarter than the rest of us when it comes to certain things. What they in their tender ages know about vile, depraved, really wicked things, we may never know in our lifetime. And this knowledge they have brought with them to the homes and will take to any environment they find themselves in. The sad thing is, the scarring is on the inside where you and I can't see it, and these children in many cases don't talk about what went on before in their lives - before they were taken to the "wicked children's homes"
So, let us be realistic here. Because while it would be foolhardy for anyone to believe that abuse never takes place in some of these institutions, like in every other thing in life there is good and there is bad. So let us get off the bandwagon for a while and just think for a moment about what would happen if we had no children's homes at all, no places of safety regardless of how ineffective we believe them to be.
CRITICISED
And after we have criticised to the limit and frustrated the workers of the children's homes en bloc, we will just go on about our usual business in our self-righteous manner, happy and satisfied that we have done our "good deed for the day". So now, who will take on the business of tending and caring for these children? Which one of us will willingly take any of the host of abandoned, abused children into our homes, bearing in mind all that they have been exposed to, and try to raise them beside our own children?
What I believe we, as a society, should be trying to do if we are serious, is to volunteer our services and finances to the children's homes to help make them better and to encourage the workers who are trying to do their best in a difficult job. Because, in my view, it is the society that has failed our children. Attacking children's homes en bloc is jumping in at the middle of the equation. We are told there are 58 Children's Homes and Places of Safety in Jamaica. As of March 2003 there were 5,206 children who were wards of the State. It is we who have abandoned and abused our children, not children's homes. How many of the critics know where even one place of safety is located? How many of us have ever visited or "sponsored" even one child at any of these homes? Or offered our professional expertise in trying to rehabilitate these children to become as near to "normal as can be achieved?
Let's think about these things before we crush entirely whatever little good we now get from children's homes.
I am etc.,
P. RUSSELL
Mandeville
