- RICARDO MAKYN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
(From left) Dr. Dorothea Dayley, deputy treasurer, and Dr. Eileen Lopez, secretary of the Association of General Practitioners of Jamaica, present some of the children at the National Children's Home with fruit juice. The association donated 60 sheet sets plus bun and cheese and other gifts to the home earlier this year.
TWO YEARS after a Government-commissioned probe into the operations of state-run children's homes and places of safety found inadequacies, things may still not be well at some institutions.
Child Development Agency (CDA) monitoring officers say absconding rates, shoddy record keeping and the need for professional attention, especially for children emotionally scarred, are cause for concern.
Human rights group, Jamaicans For Justice (JFJ), that solicited and secured the monitoring officers' reports from various regions through the Access To Information Act, said preliminary perusal of the documents has triggered fears that the well-being of the approximately 2,500 children in 63 homes, has not improved since the Keating Report of 2003.
"We are concerned that the actual lives of the children on the ground have not changed, despite Ms. (Allison) Anderson (CEO of Child Development Agency) saying on a number of occasions that x, y and z is happening," stressed a concerned Dr. Carolyn Gomes, executive director at the JFJ.
Dr. Gomes said that she was also concerned that there was no clear indication in the monitoring reports, which span the period September 2004 to September 2005, that follow-up actions were being taken to deal with the critical concerns raised. Still, Ms. Gomes highlighted that there were some homes that were doing well.
CAPACITY TO SEPARATE
However, Ms. Anderson told The Sunday Gleaner that only two areas highlighted by the 46 recommendations made in the Keating Report have not been addressed. She admitted that they have not been able to separate children who are in conflict with law from children who are in the care of the State. "We don't have the physical capacity to separate them."
Ms. Anderson explained that the juveniles who are allegedly running afoul of the law should be housed at the Stony Hill Remand Centre, but it can hold so many and no more.
She said that there are plans to construct at least three additional juvenile remand facilities.
The other area the CDA has not been able to address due to a lack of financial and human resources, is the five recommendations made in relation to the care of disabled children. Among the recommendations was the need for a resident physiotherapist.
Ms. Anderson said that outside of those two gray areas, every other recommendation in the Keating report has been implemented in some way. "All the others, we have made some effort to get them done, but it is an ongoing effort," she emphasised.
Ms. Anderson stated that she was not implying that there were no problems in the homes. "Because there are problems does not mean that we are not working. You can't expect that you are not going to find problems," she stressed.
"Nobody is hiding from the problems. The monitoring officers could say that everything is satisfactory, but that shows that there is some integrity to the process," she added.
Ms. Anderson said that existing laws do not give her agency the autonomy it deserves to further regulate the sector. "We don't have a legal basis to say that we are going to shut you (private children's homes) down or close down your operations temporarily," explained Ms. Anderson. She added that the CDA is "using this time to get them (homes) up to speed and they know that when the regulations come, that's it."
