CUMI administrator lashes Gov’t over inadequate mental care
MONTEGO BAY, St James — NURSE Joy Crooks, the administrator for the Committee for the Upliftment of the Mentally Ill (CUMI), is furious over the State’s failure to put a practical system in place to assist mentally challenged and street persons.
“This (system) needs to come from way up the top in a structured social welfare programme where there is a safety net where persons don’t reach where they are reaching on the street now. Not a token system which you glorify the launch of when you know that it is not going to work,” she fumed in the wake of last month’s murder of a homeless man who was set ablaze by a group of juveniles here.
Police reported last month that 54-year-old Lionel Maitland, a person of unsound mind, was asleep on the pavement at Super Plus Supermarket along Barnett Street, in the city, when he was doused with petrol, then set ablaze by a group of juveniles.
Maitland later died at the Cornwall Regional Hospital.
A subsequent post-mortem revealed that he died as a result of severe burns.
Crooks who condemned the grisly act, noted that it was ironic that the gruesome murder occurred in Montego Bay, a city which was very fortunate to have a facility for the development of mental health care, and assistance for the homeless, in the form of CUMI.
CUMI has been serving the mentally challenged and other street persons in Montego Bay for over 19 years through its programme at the Brandon Hill day care centre in Montego Bay.
Originally developed as an Adult Day Rehabilitation Centre, CUMI soon added a night shelter. To date, approximately 1,200 persons have been served, of which 450 have completed the rehabilitation programme and have been placed back into the community, many gaining full or part-time employment.
Crooks solemnly noted that despite what “NGOs and even community mental health care are doing, it needs to go beyond just asking for the assistance of the ordinary man on the street”.
“It needs to be developed within our social caring fabric, so it is not just making appeal and going out there, because when you go out there and make appeals they give you a hand out today and you work on that. Then, you don’t hear anything else about it and you still hear down the road that somebody else is being treated badly on the streets,” she said.
Meanwhile, the three juveniles implicated in Maitland’s murder were remanded in custody when they appeared before the Montego Bay Family Court this week.
Except for the mother of a two-year-old child, whom Family Court judge, Resident Magistrate Rosalee Toby offered bail in the the sum of $10,000, the juveniles’ parents who were charged with child neglect, were also remanded.
The three remanded juveniles, all of St James addresses, plus two others who were charged, are scheduled to appear in court this week.