Back in December 2017 Mrs Beverley Tulloch-Danvers, retired educator and then president of Porus Primary Parenting Club, told a story we won’t readily forget.

She explained that after a session in which parents were counselled on the do’s and don’ts of proper parenting, a mother exclaimed: “Mi a go stop beat mi pickney! …I used to tie him up pon tree, yuh know, an’ beat him, but I won’t do that again.”

We are reminded of that anecdote — published in this newspaper at the time — by a reportedly enhanced drive urging children to seek help before endangering themselves by running away from home.

Our reporter Ms Rochelle Clayton tells us in the Sunday Observer that child protection activist Ms Betty Ann Blaine, founder of the advocacy group Hear The Children’s Cry, intends “to mount a very powerful social media campaign to tell children to talk to us before they make a move that can destroy their lives”.

She added, “We have to talk very straightforwardly for them to understand the dangers of running away…”

Frequent beatings are by no means the only reason children run away from home, though anecdotal evidence suggests it is high on the list.

Other forms of abuse, not least sexual, verbal, emotional are among the reasons children will get so unhappy at home they decide to leave — often without a plan, as Ms Blaine pointed out.

Sadly, while many will eventually return home, some don’t, often falling from the proverbial frying pan into the fire, thanks to cruel, ruthlessly manipulative people.

Some are turned over to State-run children’s homes, only to run away again and again. The terrible truth is that some runaways end up dead; some resort to crime — preying on the rest of us.

Ms Blaine is on the right track when she speaks to the need to counsel parents on how to keep their children happy, healthy, and comfortable at home, and help parents see the value of not just talking, but listening.

“One of the big problems is this lack of communication between parents and their children. This issue of not communicating with your child is a culture thing…” says Ms Blaine.

Indeed, many Jamaicans have first-hand experience of being battered for what their parents considered to be speaking out of turn or for asking what’s deemed an inappropriate question.

So what’s to be done?

Obviously, as has been said here, helping adults — in a structured, organised way — to understand how to be good parents in an increasingly complex world is crucial.

School leaders; church elders; volunteer organisations, such as Hear The Children’s Cry; parenting clubs, such as that in Porus; and community groups of all types have big roles.

But, in our view, the standard-bearer in any campaign to help adults to be better parents should be the Jamaican State.

In that respect, as we have done previously in this space, we endorse the recent call by the United Nations Children’s Fund for the Jamaican Government to invest more in protecting all our children.

We can’t reasonably dream of a peaceful, prosperous future when so many of our young ones are being treated badly.