HEAD of the Mustard Seed Communities Monsignor Gregory Ramkissoon is to meet with Minister of Youth and Culture Lisa Hanna today to discuss his proposal to house traumatised teenaged girls in conflict with the law.

The Catholic priest said, however, that his proposal to remove the girls from penal institutions and use a facility in Malvern, St Elizabeth has not received full support from the Government.

“We are getting support from some quarters but from other quarters no. We have not put a formal proposal as yet, but tomorrow (today) we will discuss it,” Monsignor Ramkissoon told editors and reporters at the weekly Jamaica Observer Monday Exchange at the newspaper’s Beechwood Avenue headquarters in Kingston yesterday.

Ramkisoon’s offer to rescue the girls now serving time in adult prisons by placing them in a home that would be run by Mustard Seed Communities came last Monday after the death of 16-year-old Vanessa Wint, who is believed to have committed suicide inside the Horizon Remand Centre in Kingston in the previous the week.

He said Mustard Seed, the non-profit organisation he founded in 1978 to care for abandoned and handicapped children, was willing to run a facility to house teenage girls who found themselves in trouble. However, he needed help from the Government.

The Mustard Seed has its eyes on the Malvern Special High School, located in Potsdam, St Elizabeth which was being built to provide residential behavioural management for between 40 and 60 delinquent boys who are too disruptive for the regular school environment. That facility, however, might not be used as planned, based on recent utterances by Education Minister Ronald Thwaites

“The Ministry of Education has said the place in Malvern could be made available, but we are not getting across-the-board support from the Government at the moment. However, we are pushing ahead,” Ramkissoon told the Observer.

He had initially suggested that the old Jamintel building downtown Kingston be retrofitted and turned over to his institution for housing the girls, but has since said that facility was not the right environment.

Hanna is currently the convenor and chair of an Inter-Ministerial Working Group within the Government which is working on plans for short-, medium- and long-term improvements to the accommodation for juveniles who come in conflict with the law.

Addressing the plans for the proposed model, Monsignor Ramkissoon said “our basic principle is that no child in Jamaica should be abandoned twice. We want to make sure they are not abandoned at home and then we abandon them in our institutions. That is the premise on which we are starting, we do not have the present skills to deal with this situation, that is why we have asked Griffin Trust and Children First and the University [of the West Indies], and anyone else who wants to join us. We are dealing with children who are not criminally charged and just put in any place, and children who are criminally charged,” he explained.

“What we are trying to get done is, we don’t want to have the Government renege on any responsibility; the Government will have to give us a facility, we have this Malvern facility in mind which they seem to be thinking of not using it for wayward boys again. It’s nice, it’s in the countryside, it’s next to a school,” the Mustard Seed Community head added.

In the meantime, he said the involvement of the Child Development Agency was expected, as with any other licensed children’s home.

“Between the CDA and the respective ministries they will have to help us by giving us the requisite per diem as they give every Government home. They give Mustard Seed, for instance, probably 18 or 20 per cent of what they give Government homes to run homes for children who have handicaps and disabilities. These kids who will be coming on, in a way they are handicapped because of their experiences. Many of them are psychologically damaged and they need heavy psychosocial interventions; we have to make sure these children are not abandoned from start again,” he said.

“We are hoping to have a sort of board of governors formed with the different people involved, so we can run the place from that point of view. The idea is to set up a proper system with all the necessary things in place, and if we have to repeat it later on from the state level we do it, but we need to set up something small, something done and have it working,” he explained further.

Yesterday, Dr Wendel Abel, consultant psychiatrist and head, Section of Psychiatry, Department of Community Health and Psychiatry, University of the West Indies, said he had also given his support to the undertaking.

“When you are abused what has happened is that the adults in your life failed to protect you, you have been violated and so safety is an issue, and if they find themselves where they don’t feel safe that is why you will find them running away,” he said. “In as much as the behaviours are complex and the mental health issues are complex, the response they need has to be complex and comprehensive, it cannot be punitive.

“When you take a child that has been abused and remand them in custody in a penal institution you are further traumatising them and you are making the situation worse. They need to be in an environment that is safe and established on sound therapeutic principles. I support the Mustard Seed approach because for the past 30 or so years they have been dealing with children with complex issues and they seem to have a good grasp. They have the expertise and I think there is a great opening for the non-government sector, the religious community to play a critical role,” he noted.