WITH some 90 per cent of the 5,782 children under the care and protection of the Child Development Agency (CDA) having suffered directly or indirectly from trauma, the CDA last Saturday launched a year-long fund-raising campaign to raise $232 million for the development of the Smiles Recovery Treatment Centre.

The centre, which is to be built and retrofitted on property owned by or accessible to the CDA, is geared towards providing individual treatment and rehabilitation for abused children through psycho-social and acute trauma treatment, specialised evaluations, individual therapy, cognitive behaviour modification, psychotherapy and counselling.

“Everyone should understand the necessity of such a service given the context in which we live,” Carla Francis Edie, CEO of the CDA, said. “Unfortunately our children are not excluded from violence and the experience of violent acts.”

She stated that between October 2010 and October 2011, a total of 57 children have been victims of violence.

“Today we launch the fund-raising exercise for the child assessment and treatment centre, a fulfilment of one of the recommendations made in 2003 after the child protection sector was reviewed,” Edie said.

“The ultimate goal of ‘Smile’ is to take children who have been hurt and assess and provide timely and appropriate intervention to restore them to physical, mental and emotional health. We want to restore their smiles,” she told the small gathering in the parking lot at the Michi Supercentre in Kingston.

She said the concept paper for the centre was developed in 2009 with a committee established to look at the treatment services that would be available at the institution.

Calling on Jamaicans to be a part of the campaign to raise the money, Edie said the year-long activities will step up in February and end on November 12, 2012 — International World Day for the Prevention of Abuse and Violence Against Children.

According to reports from the CDA, approximately 5,782 children are in the care and protection system, with 3,326 (58 per cent) participating in the Living in Family Environments (LIFE) programme which includes foster care, supervision order and home trial. Another 2,456 (42 per cent) are in the CDA’s residential care programme which involves 61 children’s homes and places of safety across the island.

Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture Olivia Babsy Grange, who gave the address at the function, said children in the care and protection system were not adequately evaluated before being placed.

“Many of these children suffer severe trauma due to physical abuse, the loss of loved ones — especially to violence — sexual abuse and other forms of abuse,” Grange said. “We find that children in the care and protection system are not adequately evaluated before they are placed and are unlikely to receive the type of treatment required in places of safety, children’s homes and the LIFE programme,” she said.

Grange said the proposed treatment centre will correct those deficiencies.

“The centre will also be equipped to provide services to children with complex emotional and behavioural disorders, and so we will also offer a day treatment programme and outpatient counselling services for children and their families,” she said.

Maureen Irons-Morgan, director of mental health and substance abuse in the ministry of health, said the objective of the centre was to develop a state-of-the-art treatment facility to receive, assess and treat children and adolescents with psycho-social challenges and their families, as good mental health is necessary for the development of the country.

“Good mental health is necessary for economic and social wealth,” Irons-Morgan said. “It begins with our children. It is better to meet the emotional and mental heath needs of our children than to try to do the repair later on,” she said. “When children have emotional needs that are not met it can have far-reaching effects in terms of personality development, and affect their ability to live as a contributory member of our society.”

She said poor parenting skills, poor psycho-stress support, untreated mental health problems such as depression and anxiety problems are factors that can lead to behavioural problems later on.

Of the estimated one million children living in Jamaica, 20 per cent are believed to have some kind of behavioural problem.

“As many as 50,000 may have serious behavioural problems,” Irons-Morgan disclosed.