Akash Sama­roo

On Page 120 of the Ju­dith Jones 2021 re­port in­to abuse at chil­dren’s homes, there is a sub­head­ing that states: “There are in­ad­e­quate tran­si­tion­ing plans in place.”

That sec­tion goes on to say that of­ten­times, on be­com­ing 18 years of age, res­i­dents who by law must leave the homes be­come ei­ther home­less or get preg­nant soon af­ter.

In one eye-open­ing case, it was found that in the now de­funct Mar­garet Kistow Home, “mul­ti­ple male res­i­dents resided at the per­son­al res­i­dence of the As­sis­tant Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer up­on at­tain­ing the age of 18 while oth­ers were placed on the staff list­ing at the Home with­out any for­mal train­ing or ex­pe­ri­ence.”

The Di­vi­sion of Gen­der and Child Af­fairs said it was very aware of those chal­lenges and for that rea­son has launched a Tran­si­tion Sup­port Pro­gramme.

Speak­ing at the ori­en­ta­tion yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy told the au­di­ence which com­prised most­ly res­i­dents from chil­dren’s homes, that this pro­gramme is geared to­wards im­prov­ing their qual­i­ty of life when they leave the fa­cil­i­ties.

“It’s so im­por­tant in this time, be­sides the aca­d­e­mics, to get a skill. One thing I can tell you, once you have a skill, you al­ways have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to eat,” Web­ster-Roy told the crowd made up most­ly of res­i­dents from at least five chil­dren’s homes.

The pi­lot project will fo­cus on bar­ber­ing, cook­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy and ra­dio and tele­vi­sion broad­cast­ing. This will be in ad­di­tion to their sec­ondary school ed­u­ca­tion.

“Don’t ever lose the essence of who you are, de­spite the cir­cum­stances, de­spite what­ev­er may be thrown at you,” Web­ster-Roy ad­vised.

She said that this pi­lot pro­gramme was just the be­gin­ning, and they an­tic­i­pate the stan­dard­i­s­a­tion of their ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing mech­a­nisms, so all wards will re­ceive train­ing and men­tor­ship.

Manager of the St Jude’s School for Girls, Deoraj Sookdeo, at yesterday’s orientation session for the Transition Support Programme at the Office of the Prime Minister.

KARLA RAMOO

While the man­ag­er of the St Jude’s School for Girls is grate­ful the State is prepar­ing chil­dren for life af­ter the homes, he be­lieves more can be done. De­o­raj Sookdeo, who has 65 girls in a cur­rent­ly un­li­censed fa­cil­i­ty, said age 18 is still too young to say good­bye to the girls.

“If they’re in an ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­gramme they some­times don’t get to com­plete it be­cause they have to go home be­cause of the sys­tem and there’s no con­ti­nu­ity, so we need some­times to keep them in a struc­tured en­vi­ron­ment with sup­port for com­ple­tion of more of these pro­grams so maybe 21 might be pret­ty much more ap­pro­pri­ate for girls at these in­sti­tu­tions,” Sookdeo said.

He ex­pressed con­cern that of­ten he saw girls leav­ing at 18, know­ing they were go­ing in­to a tox­ic fam­i­ly en­vi­ron­ment.

“We’re see­ing them hav­ing one ba­by, two, some­times at 21 they have three kids, and the cy­cle re­peats it­self,” he said.

Sookdeo, whose St Jude’s fa­cil­i­ty was de­scribed on Mon­day as be­ing 70 per cent ready for its li­cence, was asked what is hold­ing them back from full com­pli­ance.

“It’s pri­mar­i­ly phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture that’s our ma­jor is­sue. We would have had all the rel­e­vant oth­er doc­u­men­ta­tion sub­mit­ted, there are some chal­lenges with the age of the build­ing, so they need to do some re­me­di­al work. St Jude’s has been there since 1809, so a lot of the things are ar­cha­ic and not in keep­ing with the new leg­is­la­tion,” he ex­plained.

On Mon­day, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary for the Di­vi­sion of Gen­der and Child Af­fairs Vi­jay Gan­gaper­sad said that last week Port-of-Spain’s city en­gi­neer vis­it­ed the Bel­mont fa­cil­i­ty, and they are await­ing an as­sess­ment of the struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty of the build­ing.

Sookdeo is hop­ing the State goes the way of get­ting them an en­tire­ly new lo­ca­tion.

“I per­son­al­ly, this is De­o­raj Sookdeo speak­ing, I want a new fa­cil­i­ty, I will lob­by for that,” he said.

In­fra­struc­ture aside, Sookdeo was asked what was done to rem­e­dy the is­sues re­lat­ing to abuse high­light­ed in the 2021 re­port, in­clud­ing the need for staff with spe­cial skills and train­ing to man­age the be­hav­iour­al needs of the girls and to of­fer sup­port.

In a se­ries of Guardian Me­dia re­ports last year, staff mem­bers said they were afraid of the vi­o­lent res­i­dents as they were not trained to deal with them.

Sookdeo said that cur­rent­ly there was one psy­chol­o­gist and four so­cial work­ers on staff. He is hop­ing to add one more psy­chol­o­gist and a few more so­cial work­ers. The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter is al­so recre­at­ing a train­ing pro­gramme to help res­i­dents cope with their anger.