With one out of four Jamaican children between the ages of 13 to 17 having considered suicide, according to a UNICEF Jamaica 2019 report, mental health problems among the nation’s children, child care professionals are pressed to tackle to issue.

This is especially the case for the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA), the entity charged to manage the affairs of some 4,500 children presently in State care.

But according to Chief Executive Officer of the CPFSA, Rosalee Gage-Grey, the entity’s approximately 100 social workers are over-worked while the cases of Jamaican children suffering from psychosocial abuse are piling up.

“We have about 100 social workers. At the minimum we need double that. And the average case load of each social worker is about 150, some might have 200 depending on the programme that they work in,” the CPFSA head told the Jamaica Observer in a recent interview.

According to Gage-Grey, upwards of 1,200 reports of children being abused are received monthly from the national children’s registry.

“When those reports come it is neglect, it’s self-harming, it sexual abuse, emotional abuse. The gamut of reports that come these are the issues,” said Gage-Grey, explaining further that these are issues which are not presently being adequately addressed for want of clinically trained child care professionals.

“The point that we have been raising is the fact that we need additional officers to be able to give full and quality service to each of the children that we serve. All of our officers come to us with a first degree in psychology, social work or one of those equivalent areas. The clinical part of it which usually at the Master’s level but, we require persons who can do some clinical work.

“We have general social workers, some social workers who are counselors and, and those who work in other areas such as foster care officers. But we need them with some clinical skills because we are getting children who have gone through extreme behavioral, psychosocial issues or traumatic experiences that are causing them psychosocial distress,” Gage-Grey added. “You have children who will require long-term therapeutic treatment, others who might after a certain number of sessions are okay. But we want to set a basic minimum considering the circumstances and the case load of the officers.”

The reports, Gage-Grey explained, are investigated by children’s officers who are investigators who either refer the child for counseling or other intervention programmes. However, depending on the gravity of the abuse at home, the child goes before the court for child care and protection where a judge either puts the child on a supervision programme, which means the child remains at home under the supervision of an assigned social worker or, the child goes to a place of safety awaiting the outcome of the court proceedings.

“They are then out of one of the programmes; whether it is they are up free for adoption, or they go into foster care, or could they go into long term residential care,” said Gage-Grey.

However, weighing in on this matter of children in State care, child and adolescent psychiatrist, Dr Ganesh Shetty, raised the fact that children with untreated behavioural problems often leave the child care system without being rehabilitated.

“If it’s a place of safety, they are there for a short time and then eventually they are moved, disrupting the connection they have made with some good people in that home and the children in that home. And when they react to this and start to give trouble, they are somehow moved again to another home,

“From the day a child is removed from an abusive situation we need to be thinking about rehabilitation,” said Dr Shetty, adding the family of children in State care to assist in the rehabilitation process.

“More work needs to be done in the community with family or extended family with a sense of rehabilitation of these children rather than what we could do in a short time. If the work in the system goes well, they will be with us for a short time and not stuck with us until they are 18 and come out on their own,” he said.

Meanwhile, in a bid to build the capacity of their social workers, some 30 CPFSA field officers participated in a workshop and mental health lecture focused on intervention techniques for conduct and oppositional defiance disorders in children held earlier this month.

The lecture was aimed at equipping the officers in screening, assessing and, treating children with behavioural issues.

At the workshop, Gage-Grey announced that the CPFSA will soon be establishing a state-of-the-art therapeutic centre that will offer psychological support to children who have undergone severe emotional trauma and are in need of therapeutic intervention.

A clinical social work certification programme is also in the pipeline which will boost the capacity of over 30 field officers to respond effectively to the needs of children which was recently signed in partnership with the Jamaica Social Investment Fund and the Mico University.

CPFSA’s behaviour modification programme and trauma informed-care programme will also aid in the same regard; equipping officers to deal with the traumatic experiences affecting children.

“To achieve better outcomes involving children we have a duty to ensure that our children do not suffer emotional trauma in silence. We believe that every child’s mental health status is extremely important hence our response mechanism must be symmetric in addressing the issue,” Gage-Grey added. “From our standpoint, children who enter State care are psychologically screened to give us a general picture of their psychological well-being. Every child who comes into care must get some basic level of screening.”

Reflecting on the five-year-old boy who witnessed the brutal killing of his mother recently in the volatile Jones Town community, Gage-Grey encouraged social workers to not be daunted by the work load.

“When we think of that child growing up without a mother or a father and, the burden he had at one o’clock in the morning to be delivering that message, we realise that the issues that we are facing and the mental health issues that are facing, as first responders who have to go into the field when these situations occur. It tells us that what we are doing is very important.

“We cannot, however, be daunted in our mission to provide quality services to children in the child protection sector and the wider society because we have many Jamaican children with very big dreams to be achieved. Their success is dependent on us,” said Gage-Grey.