The Editor, Sir:

This is in response to the Letter of the Day 'Abolish children's homes! Put them back into families' published on Wednesday, January 17.

Sometimes, recommendations and solutions are emotional and not well thought out. We are all guilty of that. Yes, it would be nice to put the children into their utopian communities and homes.

However, the realities must be faced. Where should the Child Development Agency put the numerous children in distress through neglect, abuse, HIV-affected, orphaned, parent arrested, mama can't manage, until a home is found?

There are children on the streets in Montego Bay. How about taking just one?

One child is 14. His mama is working in Curaçao. She doesn't send him food money. He washes cars and begs. He is a good-looking boy. Another is 15, he has been machete-slashed on his face and recently hit in the head. He begs also. He believes he is ugly now and bleaches his face. He is a suicidal child. His grandmother is employed and lives in Montego Bay. There are a few smaller children about age 10. Maybe they are just undernourished.

Do the theorists feed these children, bandage their cuts; find some clean clothes or offer a blanket to put under the houses or in literal North Gully where they sleep? Do they know when and what that child last ate? Did they look in the eyes of the homeless 10-year-old even though he or she is covered in impetigo or fungus and takes the druggie route to make him or her feel better? Do they know where they bathe or the name of the horror that pays them for sex at night? Where does the child go when he or she has a cold and fever? Did the theorists note the statistics between quickly lost weight and declaratively wolfish crime? Do the theorists know the names of these babies or why they are on the streets?

Global quixotic battle

Abolishing children's homes is a global quixotic battle. They are in the homes, sometimes their entire childhood, while the talk of 'the horror, the horror, what to do, what to do, what to do' continues. Usually the talk, paper perusal, with expensive crystal grand dinner launches and workshops are by folks that didn't take one of the children or visit a children's home, with many 'good' reasons. The children need you on happy Wednesdays, and hungry Thursdays not just at press-attended Christmas.

So, go to the children's homes and take one of the children. Take one off the streets. Feed one today. Go find out what one place of safety or one orphanage needs today. Is it sheets, soap, more food, a toilet fixed, a railing sanded, Band-Aids? Mentor one child in the home. Teach him how to tie his shoelaces, how to shave and how to take eventual care of himself with banks and registrars. Show them how a telephone book works.

We all have grand ideas and we all have bleeding hearts, but face the reality, what community anywhere in Jamaica is currently deemed safe enough for any of us? What agency doesn't have overwhelming and heartbreaking barriers?

When children are on the streets, the country is in distress. In Jamaica, national distress is another nuclear quixotic battle. The nameless children are a part of the ashy fallout.

Care of the children, the families and the communities will work by spiritually guided individual interest. Take one of the children home. The Child Development Agency has a working Foster Care Programme. Montego Bay 979-3446. They need you to foster a child. Do it now. No excuses.

I am, etc.,

DONNAMARIE ROSS

awritersnotes@hotmail.com

Jacob's Well

Montego Bay

Via Go-Jamaica