BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

A so­cial me­dia post last week Sun­day night made by 15-year-old Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty Child Sup­port Cen­tre es­capee Ri­car­do Thomp­son, de­tail­ing claims of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing abuse and ill-treat­ment at the child sup­port cen­tre, sparked some out­rage by the on­line pub­lic and raised ques­tions about staff mon­i­tor­ing and train­ing.

But in a vir­tu­al me­dia con­fer­ence held by the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, di­rec­tor Nichola Har­vey-Mitchell de­fend­ed the in­sti­tu­tion’s staff say­ing it hired peo­ple with the rel­e­vant knowl­edge, skills, abil­i­ties, and oth­er at­trib­ut­es about their de­grees and ex­pe­ri­ence in the field.

Staff hired in­clud­ed trained psy­chol­o­gists, coun­sel­lors, so­cial work­ers and med­ical doc­tors. Har­vey-Mitchell said train­ing of these pro­fes­sion­als was al­so on­go­ing.

“As the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, we are stead­fast in our man­date. We con­tin­ue to do what we are man­dat­ed to do and I want to say com­men­da­tions to all of the staff who will make per­son­al sac­ri­fices to en­sure that the chil­dren are safe, that the chil­dren are pro­tect­ed, that the chil­dren get their meals, that the chil­dren get their cloth­ing, that the chil­dren have their three con­tacts with their par­ents on a week­ly ba­sis to en­sure, they con­tin­ue to main­tain pos­i­tive re­la­tion­ships with their par­ents,” said Har­vey Mitchell.

Of the claims of abuse, how­ev­er, she con­firmed a com­plaint was made to her by one of the boys dur­ing a dis­cus­sion be­fore his es­cape, which was cur­rent­ly un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Re­spond­ing to whether claims of abuse had pre­vi­ous­ly been made, Har­vey-Mitchell said, “Yes, we have had claims of abuse with­in the par­tic­u­lar home. Some of them were sub­stan­ti­at­ed and some were not sub­stan­ti­at­ed when we did our in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the chil­dren’s home.

“Sim­i­lar­ly, at the child sup­port cen­tre we had one abuse mat­ter if we could say that…re­cent­ly and this present one which we have dealt with.”

But de­spite Har­vey-Mitchell’s prais­es of staff, some ac­tivists be­lieve lack of ad­e­quate train­ing was still a huge prob­lem at chil­dren’s homes.

So­cial work­er Al­soona Boswell-Jack­son, who has worked in var­i­ous ca­pac­i­ties with chil­dren’s homes and com­mu­ni­ty res­i­dences, said while the in­fra­struc­ture was there to try to of­fer a rest­ing place and meals to chil­dren, these homes se­vere­ly lacked staff train­ing.

“Many homes hire per­sons and the peo­ple that they hire to deal with the chil­dren are not ad­e­quate­ly and suf­fi­cient­ly trained. In ad­di­tion to that, a lot of these homes are short-staffed.

So be­cause they are short-staffed, there is a high turnover of staff, be­cause of how the en­vi­ron­ment is set up, and the con­di­tions un­der which they work and then re­mu­ner­a­tion not be­ing ad­e­quate.

“So you would find that staff is stretched thin and they are not ad­e­quate­ly paid or hand­some­ly com­pen­sat­ed for the things that they have to do and the length of hours that they have to work,” Boswell-Jack­son il­lus­trat­ed.

Boswell-Jack­son, who al­so works with school-aged chil­dren, adults, and fam­i­lies and is al­so a part-time par­ent­ing ed­u­ca­tor with Fam­i­lies In Ac­tion, made the com­ments dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia while re­spond­ing to the post made by Thomp­son, one of the three re­main­ing mi­nor es­capees, who es­caped from Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty Child Sup­port Cen­tre last week­end. Two of them, Semi­on Daniel, 15, and An­to­nio Fran­cois, 16, were killed last Sun­day night while al­leged­ly lim­ing with oth­er teens at an aban­doned house at Des­per­lie Cres­cent, Laven­tille.

Boswell-Jack­son not­ed one had to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion why chil­dren were in a home in the first place.

She said they were in homes for sev­er­al rea­sons—placed by the court for their pro­tec­tion, aban­doned or re­moved from their homes be­cause of var­i­ous forms of abuse, so they were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing some de­gree of trau­ma in their lives and if the staff at these homes were not men­tal­ly and holis­ti­cal­ly trained to deal with the chil­dren, then the pos­si­bil­i­ty of abuse was very high.

The Gov­ern­ment must al­so be held ac­count­able re­gard­ing chil­dren’s homes, Boswell-Jack­son said.

“I think the Gov­ern­ment needs to play a more se­ri­ous and cru­cial role in the run­ning of these homes. A num­ber of these homes are faced with a lot of bu­reau­cra­cy and red tape from the Gov­ern­ment in terms of fi­nance and im­ple­ment­ing cer­tain leg­is­la­tion.”

She said while some leg­is­la­tion ex­ist­ed as it per­tained to guide­lines for com­mu­ni­ty res­i­dences, they did not work syn­er­gis­ti­cal­ly.

“There is leg­is­la­tion in terms of the guide­lines for com­mu­ni­ty res­i­dences, it has the Chil­dren’s Act and the li­cen­sure that the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty has, all this leg­is­la­tion could be put in place, but if you don’t have a syn­er­gy from all the stake­hold­ers—the union that gov­erns the care­tak­ers, the Gov­ern­ment and the board of the homes, to en­sure that the pa­ra­me­ters that are en­shrined in the leg­is­la­tion are car­ried out, then you would al­ways be butting heads and the chil­dren would be the ones who would be the col­lat­er­al dam­age,” Boswell-Jack­son warned.

Trau­ma spe­cial­ist and pres­i­dent of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Abused and Bat­tered In­di­vid­u­als (OABI), Sh­er­na Alexan­der-Ben­jamin, agreed with Boswell-Jack­son’s sen­ti­ments, adding that be­ing the re­cip­i­ent of a de­gree did not mean one was qual­i­fied to un­der­stand how to in­ter­act with res­i­dents in com­mu­ni­ty homes.

Speak­ing on the al­leged abuse post­ed by Thomp­son, Alexan­der-Ben­jamin said re­ports about abuse in what is now called com­mu­ni­ty res­i­dences were not new.

“Change of name does not change the be­hav­iours that are con­scious­ly or un­con­scious­ly per­pe­trat­ed against the res­i­dents. The ma­jor­i­ty of staff mem­bers lack ad­e­quate train­ing to func­tion in such en­vi­ron­ments,” she re­it­er­at­ed.

She added, “Al­so, there may be staff that may feel over­whelmed and do not have the skills to ef­fec­tive­ly func­tion such staff may be man­i­fest­ing harm­ful be­hav­iours be­liev­ing it’s right based on a lack of knowl­edge and train­ing.”

Alexan­der-Ben­jamin said the gov­ern­ing body for these com­mu­ni­ty res­i­dences ought to re­vis­it their poli­cies, re­port­ing, and ac­count­abil­i­ty mech­a­nisms and in­cor­po­rate a so­cial jus­tice lens to hu­man­ise pol­i­cy and mech­a­nisms.

Mean­while, for­mer com­mis­sion­er of pris­ons Ger­ard Wil­son, who dur­ing his tenure in the Prison Ser­vice dealt ex­ten­sive­ly with both male and fe­male mi­nors from ju­ve­nile homes reach­ing the prison sys­tem, said he was not cer­tain ad­e­quate train­ing was giv­en to care­tak­ers at these homes.

“There are so many fac­tors that we can look at, as we look at ju­ve­nile delin­quen­cy. Some­times these places are opened and the state might be hap­py that they have a place to send them. But are we re­al­ly spend­ing time to equip these fa­cil­i­ties with per­sons who are trained and ma­ture and com­pe­tent to deal with these ju­ve­niles?” Wil­son asked.

He said the job was not for the faint at heart.

“I am telling you, they could be a hand­ful and if you do not have pa­tience, for­get it. If you are tak­ing the job be­cause it is a way to put bread on your ta­ble…for­get it. You must have a pas­sion. And you must be gen­uine­ly in­ter­est­ed in the well-be­ing and wel­fare of these chil­dren,” he ad­vised.