ST Catherine, with its complex social problems linked to crime and inner-city violence and pockets of rural poor, tops the island in child care problems, of the 60,000 persons across Jamaica seeking the services of the Child Development Agency (CDA) annually, says specialist Alison Anderson.

Anderson, CDA executive director, says St Catherine accounts for 25 per cent of the persons seeking child protection services from her fledgling agency.

“… So if you were looking across the island, to look at the parish where we have the most complex and complicated child protection problems, we would say St Catherine,” Anderson said.

Regionally, some 60-75 per cent of the reports made to the agency come from the western and south-eastern regions.

The west comprises St James, Trelawny and Hanover, whereas the south-east zone has Kingston, St Andrew, St Thomas and St Catherine.

It is mostly mothers who seek help from the CDA, often requesting assistance with behavioural problems of children in the 11 to 15 age group.

Anderson said Thursday that 40 to 50 per cent of the children for whom help is sought tend to have behavioural problems, some of it criminal.

“The children are experiencing criminality and risky behaviour. Their mothers say them can’t ‘hear’. Their mothers say they can’t cope – the children are uncontrollable,” said the CDA boss, whose agency both has responsibility broadly for overseeing the social welfare and protection of all children, and to ensure the proper care and protection of those who are wards of the state.

In a further breakdown of the types of cases, Anderson indicated that the majority 70 per cent were abuse-related.

Said she: “30 per cent are for neglect; 40 per cent abuse; and the remaining 29 per cent runs the gamut of advice regarding where to pay a school fee or how to get money to pay the school fee and so on.”

Persons using the agency’s services recognise, she added, that their child care arrangements were inadequate; and were passing judgment on themselves for being unable to cope, Anderson told North St Andrew Kiwanians, meeting at the Hilton Kingston hotel.

The CDA itself has no complete picture on the level of abuse that Jamaican children face, with Anderson noting that “most of those reports of abuse go directly to the police or to hospitals.”

The reports collected by her agency come primarily from caregivers, which, said Anderson, fail to capture the voice of the children, citing it as a weakness in the structure.

“We are not necessarily hearing from the children themselves, as the victims, or the main players in this family breakdown,” she said.

Those children that need a voice, she said, will soon have the services of the promised Child Advocate.

“We have that mechanism in the office of the children’s advocate and I expect and anticipate that, long before the end of this calendar year, we will have our first independent national human rights institution dedicated exclusively to children in the form of the advocate,” said the CDA head.

The agency, which was commissioned as a full executive agency in 2004, continues to build a new model of child protection in Jamaica, one, she suggested, that is to be driven by proactive social intervention.

So far, 80 new social workers have been deployed islandwide – “the most social workers and children’s officers we have ever had in the field,” she said.

“The vision of the agency is very simple, perhaps even simplistic – competent, confident staff delivering services that meet the individual needs of our clients.”

As part of the modernisation, the agency is assessing individual childeren in its care, or for whom intervention has been sought, involving a child care plan tailored to the circumstance of each child.

Clearly written procedures also set out what the staff is required to do for the children and cases they oversee.

A public education campaign called ‘Act Right’ has also been launched around the Child Care and Protection Act.

edwardsc@jamaicaobserver.com