TIME is an intangible. We cannot see, touch or hear it, but we are aware of its passing measured by everything from the wrinkles on once youthful faces or the threads of grey in our hairs, to life changes like marriages, childbirth, graduations, divorces, and deaths.

I take stock of my life through these experiences, those of my friends or even people in the spotlight. Last Saturday, for example, my neighbour held a welcome home reception for her grandson, born two months ago in Massachusetts. We moved alongside each other 11 years ago. Her oldest child was 12 years old. Now, he is balancing marriage, fatherhood and simultaneously earning a degree in psychology and Rabbinic studies. My godson, whose terrible twos I remember so well, has his high school graduation party this weekend. And Malia Obama, who moved into the White House as a 10-year-old, just had what likely is her first proposal from a Kenyan man willing to offer her parents 50 cows, 70 sheep and 30 goats in exchange for her hand in marriage.

There are other measures such as changing attitudes about social phenomenon and infrastructural development. Among other accomplishments, Jamaica, for example, is developing a better network of roads, which makes travelling faster and safer and communities more accessible. This is a good thing. Many of our well-used roadways belong to the horse and buggy era — disasters waiting to happen from one commute to the next.

In other areas, very little has been done to advance development goals. As the discussion around child safety continues, for example, I pulled an editorial I wrote for The Gleaner, dated Thursday, May 23. I am only now noticing that when I clipped it, the last digit of the year was cut off. I believe, though, it would be 1995 or 1996, which would put it near the end of Child Month that year. Back then, I wrote a lot about children and women’s welfare, which is why I was asked to write the editorial.

Titled ‘The Children are the Future’, it says: “If a civilised society is rated by the way it treats its young, then we are languishing in the Dark Ages…The government, though signatory to the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child, continues to plead inadequate resources to effectively address problems in the health, education, transportation, and other sectors which directly impact young children…”

As it is now, there were uncomfortable numbers of child murders and abductions then. The police was largely unmoved and uninterested in reports of missing children.

Two cases from that time have had a lifelong impact on me. The first was that of Krysta Gayle, a beloved five-year-old from a rural St Thomas community. She had been walking on a path toward her house where her mother watched and waited for her. About 300 yards from the house, she inexplicably vanished, sending her mother into an emotional collapse. To the best of my knowledge, she has never been found. In the other case, a little girl disconnected from her mother in a back-to-school rush in a bookstore downtown. She was taken by a woman who claimed she found her on King Street. She kept her for nine months before returning her to her mother, a University of the West Indies graduate who was savvy enough to use the media to keep the spotlight on her lost child. The abductor was not prosecuted.

The issues we faced now are carryovers from broader societal attitudes, which historically placed low premium on poor children especially. While the public relations have become savvier and there are now a plethora of agencies supposedly responsible for child protection, how has the reality changed in the quality of protection that children enjoy? If there are real changes, why are we now experiencing consistent attacks against children? And, what tangible efforts are in place to reduce the probability of them becoming victims of one form of abuse or another? Legislation, particularly those that say “give me a dead child and I will publish the killer”, is reactive and largely meaningless. In our context, perpetrators often are not apprehended and, even if they are, we still have a dead child or children.

My unhinging about time and the gap between talk and action comes out of my observation on the ground versus the grand rhetoric in the media and on agency websites. I wrote last week about the two girls walking past my parents’ house in south Manchester on their way to Woodlands Primary School. It is more than a three-mile walk one way — the same distance I walked as a child.

About 40 years ago, my father took us out of Marlie Hill, the neighbourhood school. He had clear memories of a time when Marlie Hill was a good school and he thought it had suffered from political interference and the imposition of teachers and administrators for other reasons than their qualifications. Gradually, more and more parents pulled their children and soon enough, a small army of us was trekking to Woodlands.

I was driven on to the premises of Marlie Hill School recently. From the look of things, I still would not send my children there. In the years since we left not much has been done to make it appealing to the community, nor has anything been done to provide safe transportation for those who see Woodlands as the best option. I am certain there are similar examples elsewhere; this is just what I know intimately.

Increasingly, I find it almost revolting to listen to some politicians. I am trained to think critically, to problem-solve and be aware of different perspectives; I know how to distinguish between fact and fiction and rhetoric and reality and, after a while, the spin becomes irritating.

RasBenjiMassop, a regular commentator of the Observer site, puts it this way: “As has become commonplace,…the talk is convincing, but the understanding of the underpinnings which support lofty ideals, and the ability to quietly and diligently construct and maintain these supporting structures, is very often left without attention and resource.”

Next week, I will look further into the gap, and I will look too into why it is unethical to use people’s ideas without crediting them for it.

Grace Virtue, PhD, is a social justice advocate.