THE preliminary result of a recent study by UNICEF Jamaica and the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CaPRI) has indicated that COVID-19 challenges have led to an increase in tensions within families.

The data, which was collected between June and August 2020 from three sources — a desk review, interviews with key informants and an islandwide representation survey of just over 500 household with children — revealed that the emotional health and protection of children were endangered.

Under emotional health, the study revealed that 63 per cent of households reported increases in children’s level of boredom and 57 per cent reported increases in overeating. Other emotions among children that were elevated, relative to pre-COVID-19, included frustration — 41 per cent; clinginess — 49 per cent; anxiety — 23 per cent and fear — 21 per cent.

Under child protection, the study indicated that 41 per cent of the respondents admitted that adults in the household are shouting, yelling, screaming or calling their child names more frequently than they did prior to the COVID-19 restrictions. This includes 20 per cent who said there was a marked increase in these incidents.

In addition, approximately 15 per cent of respondents said that children were spanked, hit, or slapped more frequently since the start of COVID-19 and the response measures. One out of 20 respondents said that this kind of venting is much more frequent.

Janet Cupidon Quallo, child protection specialist at UNICEF Jamaica, said on the matter of abuses, it points to tensions in the family that is a major concern for the social services.

“What this points to is tensions in this family. You don’t have to explain why COVID-19 and lockdowns would lead to anxiety. Sometimes that anxiety is taken out on those closest to us, the most vulnerable who can’t defend themselves very well, and those are the children for the most part. So a frustrated parent not knowing what to do in this new situation that they are facing, the loss of income and so on… getting very annoyed very easily when these bored, frustrated, clingy kids are around them and they don’t know what to do—hence the shouting, hence the hitting and other forms of abuses. It doesn’t spell well for family life hence the concern of the social services for reaching out to families to provide support,” Cupidon Quallo said.

Further, the UNICEF Jamaica child protection specialist said families are experiencing conditions under COVID-19 that they never had to cotend with before and UNICEF alongside other partner agencies such as the Child Protection and Family Services Agency and the National parenting Support Commission recognise the need to expand social services to deal with emotional health challenges and other strains on family life.

“We recognise that not everybody is able to adjust in a small period of time. Some are better able to do so based on their education, level of experience. For some families it’s a new thing and for others it’s a worsening of the conditions they were already experiencing. All round for families that are coping sort of okay and for those that are really experiencing challenges in dealing with mental health issues, there is the need for social services to reach out more. There are already a lot of demand for social services but most if not all recognise the need to increase access to mental health services and to expand taking in geographic scope into consideration,” Cupidon Quallo said.

She added: “At one level the response of the social services needs to be awareness raising and at the other level, which is a bit more challenging, is to expand the services to create more access for those that need the service and are reaching out in one way or the other for help.”

Moreover, Cupidon Quallo said providing services remotely was one of the priority areas of UNICEF and its partner agencies.

“The agenices want to respond but they have to respond in ways that don’t put the children and their families and social services workers at risk. So one of the methods that we have considered and addressed is that of the establishment of help lines. UNICEF supported the National Parenting Support Commission earlier on in the first days of COVID to establish parent support lines across the island so that parents have somebody to call to talk to about their problems. Sometimes it was just to have a listening ear. But some persons wanted counselling and got some basic counselling services. These were provided by parent mentors who were trained, but they are not psychologists nor social workers. So where they are aware that they need to refer, they refer. There was the immediate basic counselling services, also advice on where to get help because sometimes the requests were not just for what do I do about my kids acting out, but they also wanted to know where to get financial help. So people were referred to places like PATH,” Cupidon Quallo explained.

Meanwhile, Donneth Edmonson, monitoring and evaluation specialist at UNICEF Jamaica, said the data on emotional health were matters for concern.

“Overeating is always an issue in terms of nutrition and especially as they have indiated that they are also having to cut back on the quality of the food that they provide based on the reduction in income. But while we didn’t measure the level of anxiety, increased clingliness, sadness, anxiety and fear would definitely matters for concern,” Edmonson said.

In relation to the emotional health data, Cipidon Quallo added that a lot depends on context regarding what is happening in the home, but sadness and anxiety indicate depression, which is a more worrying mental health condition than overeating and boredom, as it can lead to other more serious matters.

Meanwhile, UNICEF Jamaica and its partners have been reaching out to children through telephone calls and WhatsApp messages to provide psychological first aid and psychosocial support. The agencies have also been working on the production of videos and social media messages encouraging parents to reach out for help before situations escalate. There are also materials available to help parents cope with tense situations and keep children occupied to reduce their boredom and anxiety.