THE Early Childhood Commission says a recent survey has shown that young children were still receiving corporal punishment, even though it was outlawed with the passage of the Early Childhood Act in 2005.

“We asked them to describe their rights…they spoke about their rights to go to school and their right to have a home,” Professor Maureen Samms Vaughan, executive chairman of the Early Childhood Commission of Jamaica said during Monday’s launch of the commission’s annual conference at the Alhambra Inn in Kingston.

“When we asked them about the things that make them sad, they talked about not having enough time with their parents…They spoke very strongly about corporal punishment…One of the things they spoke about was the impact it had on them emotionally when they were punished in front of other children,” Samms Vaughan said.

At the same time, she said parents agreed that corporal punishment was not the best option, however, they were not sufficiently armed with alternatives to corporal punishment or support services to help them to deal with indiscipline.

The data was collected from three separate focus groups, consisting of children, parents and practitioners, in preparation for the annual early childhood conference to be held at the Sunset Jamaica Grande Hotel in Ocho Rios from June 19 to 21.

“The overall goal of this conference is to develop an understanding of the distribution and dissemination process of the General Comments Seven (which deals with the progress made in protecting the rights of the child) and to see how we can further the distribution,” Samms Vaughan told reporters.

“When we have this conference… we are going to have public education and discussion about how we go about implementing the rights of the child in early childhood,” she added.

The general comments seek to place greater emphasis on how child rights operate in the early childhood period and to increase awareness of the importance of the period of child development. Implementing Child Rights in Early Childhood was prepared in order to address the Early Childhood period in the context of the Convention of the Rights of the Child.

Jamaica has been chosen to monitor the distribution and dissemination of General Comments Seven. Additionally, Jamaica, being a signatory of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, is due to submit a report on the progress it has made in implementing the 41 articles of the convention.

The Early Childhood Commission’s annual conference will, therefore, be seeking to bring together various stakeholders that have responsibility for children in the early childhood period and provide them with information on the issue. Participants from 18 countries, including Haiti, as well as 88 educators from Jamaica, are expected to attend.

“We are not just going to explore it, but we are going to end up with a programme that will set the stage for moving those rights ahead and that is called the positive agenda. The positive agenda will be a series of set policies and programmes that will ensure that the rights of children are met.”

Workshop topics include exploitation of children and child rights, gender and child rights and the rights of children to safety and security in disaster and emergency situations.

Participants will be monitored after the conference to see how the information they have been exposed to at the conference is manifested in their personal ability to ensure that children’s rights are met in their respective organisations, according to the Early Childhood Commission.