THE Government-commissioned review on the island children’s homes and places of safety has painted a bleak and depressing picture of institutions where children receive inadequate care and the state has failed to insist on minimum standards for their operation.

It called for an urgent overhaul of the management of the homes, including separate facilities or physical separation of children in need of care and protection and those deemed uncontrollable or have committed criminal offences.

“A common thread running through the recommendations is the need to immediately begin improvements in the homes and places of safety,” said the report authored by Sadie Keating, the retired civil servant who chaired the four-member review panel. “The Ministry of Health should now develop a plan of action geared at meeting the needs of homes and places of safety, medium and long term, and to set verifiable objectives and standards against outcomes which will be measured.”

It suggested that the administration already had some guidelines with which to work — a 1999 report by UNICEF on childcare issues in Jamaica and one in 2000 by the management consultants, KPMG, that mapped the way for the creation of the Child Development Agency, which was launched in April.

Last night the report findings were welcomed by Kay Osbourne, the Jamaican woman whose public campaign led to the Government’s appointment of the Keating Committee last December.

“The Ministry of Health and church leaders must now admit liability for harming our children and provide relief,” Osbourne said in a statement e-mailed to the Observer. “If the Ministry of Health’s leadership is to recover any credibility to manage the country’s childcare system, all… the officials who created and presided over the current lethal system must immediately be removed from having responsibility for Jamaica’s childcare and procession system.”

“Jamaica’s children deserve this small gesture of accountability,” Osbourne added.

Last year, Osbourne had complained that a small boy she adopted from a home operated by the United Church of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands had been sexually abused by care-givers and the child himself had displayed heightened sexual curiosity and aggressiveness.

She claimed to have received little attention from the authorities.

Osbourne insisted that such abuse was widespread, involving several of the 45 children’s homes and 12 places of safety and it was her documentation of a number of alleged cases that formed the basis of a complaint by the rights group, Jamaicans for Justice, against the Government to the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR).

But the Keating report suggested that like in the wider society, there are significant levels of sexual and other abuse in children’s homes.

The reviewers, for instance, noted that a 2000 study had found that 40 per cent of Jamaican children between 10 and 18 were sexually active, many of them initiated by preying family members, including fathers and step-fathers.

“By the time some of these juveniles enter the institutions, their sexual appetite is well-established,” the report said. “In order to find sexual release, they often become sexual predators by initiating younger victims when they cannot find willing bedfellows.”

But the Keating Committee made clear these were not the only forms of sexual encounters in children’s homes and places of safety, based on the anecdotal information received, including statements by children.

“One child spoke of being raped by care-givers in an institution and other children have been identified who have been sexually abused by care-giving staff.”

The report also highlighted the complaint of a paediatrician who reported that a child from an institution “was noted to have obvious sexualised behaviour”.

“What was significant about this particular child was that on previous admissions to hospital and before placement in the institution, no such behaviour had been demonstrated,” the report added.

It did not identify the homes where such cases of sexual abuse were reported.

But it was not only instances of physical abuse with which children had to contend. The generally poor physical condition in which they live, the inadequate training of staff and poor supervision by the authorities, apparently contributed to an environment with high levels of illnesses, including depression, and, in some cases, suicidal tendencies.

“Attempted suicides and suicidal thoughts are exceptionally high in homes,” the report pointed out.

Recounting a focus group session with children, the report added: “Children spoke of witnessing on several occasions, attempts at suicide by hanging.

“They talked about their efforts to untie sheets and scarves to assist their peers from hurting themselves, their feelings of anxiety and helplessness and the off-hand manner in which the ‘staff’ responded to their pleas for help: ‘So why you didn’t just leave him/her?'”

While the environment is bad for mostly all children in institutions, it is worse with those who have disabilities — an estimated 37 per cent, substantially three times the rest of the society.

But except for a few, the institutions have little beyond rudimentary arrangements to care for such children.

Said the report: “Children with moderate to profound developmental/physical disabilities are placed in a system that is already unable to respond to the emotional and physical needs of non-disabled children, let alone the complex challenges of children with special needs. The system is currently not positioned to provide opportunities to ensure that the ability of each child is maximised.

“The system is unable to define their development, medical and emotional needs; there is no minimum standards to ensure that where there is some understanding of their needs, these needs are met.”

In fact, Keating’s group saw first hand some of the conditions endured by the disabled at some of the 15 homes they visited during the review.

“At our visit (to one home), there was an eighteen-year-old lying in her faeces,” the report said.

Keating’s committee also blasted the now-defunct Child Services Division (CSD) of the health ministry, which had responsibility for overseeing the homes.

It failed to inspect and monitor the homes, some of which are cramped with signs of vermin and overall squalor.

“There is no indication that the CSD has established a roster for conducting audits and reviewing homes to ensure that they are consistent with licensing agreements,” the report said.

In fact, of the 15 homes visited by the team, nine could not recall an official inspection by the CSD “in the past three years”.