Children’s Advocate Diahann Gordon Harrison says adequate care must be provided to the 59 severely disabled orphans who arrived in Jamaica last Thursday to prevent them from experiencing the type of turmoil associated with a change in social environment.

“Change usually comes with some amount of upheaval, whether you are an adult or a child, especially when you are a child who suffers from some kind of disability. It means that the magnitude is even greater, and so whenever there is any transition or change, the extent and degree of psychosocial support will need to be that much more heightened so that the child can, in fact, adjust more quickly and more seamlessly,” she told the Jamaica Observer last Friday.

“They are coming from a different country, so there’s gonna be a culture shock, there’s going to be that transition period that they’re going to need support to go through and also to trust a new environment as well, that they would not have been exposed to. They don’t have parents, so it’s going to be quite a time of upheaval for these children,” she explained.

“There will perhaps be new routines. We may do things slightly differently than they were accustomed to in Haiti, so the experts and the professionals who are working with them would be sufficiently [aware] of these possibilities and know how to cauterise the effects so that the impact is not too great,” Gordon Harrison added.

The children and 13 adults who care for them at the orphanage run by HaitiChildren arrived in Port Antonio, Portland, after what was described as a “delicate operation” mounted by the orphanage, local charity Mustard Seed Communities, and the Jamaican Government. They received significant assistance from former United States Ambassador to Jamaica Luis Moreno, Jamaica’s former Chief of Defence Staff Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin, and Sentinel Foundation, a non-profit organisation in North Carolina, United States, that targets child traffickers, protects children, and provides crisis response.

Shortly after their arrival, Susan Krabacher, founder of HaitiChildren, told the Observer that they went through great pains to get the children out of violence-ravaged Haiti and away from the gangs which have taken over large sections of the country and have shut off access to hospitals while continuing to make aggressive demands for money.

Krabacher also said she is determined to evacuate another 34 children under her organisation’s care and protection who are still in Haiti.

The orphans, as well as their caregivers, are bring housed at Mustard Seed’s Jacob’s Ladder home in Moneague, St Ann.

Child psychologist Dr Orlean Brown Earle told the Sunday Observer that since the orphans are accompanied by their caregivers and placed in a more suitable environment for healthcare, this minimises the impact that the transition could have.

“For those with physical disabilities, the importance for them would be making sure whatever resources they had would continue in terms of support services,” she said.

“They have what you call bound care, and they are going to be in a regulated structured environment, so it’s neither here nor there in terms of their physical, mental, or social care once the caregivers are there that speak their language and once the basic resources that the organisation provided are still being continued,” she added.

The decision to accept the Haitian orphans has been met with mixed views from Jamaicans. Some say it was the right thing to do while others believe that Jamaica has its own problems to attend to and should not be taking in outsiders.

Gordon Harrison said she can understand both sides of the debate.

“Jamaica, as you know, we have our own issues including in relation to children who are in dire need of support and care, and so I understand the sentiment when persons say take care of your own first. But equally [we have a] responsibility as a good Caribbean neighbour, particularly in relation to Haiti that has been plagued with a lot of issues. Social unrest, political upheaval, natural disasters have really ravished Haiti quite a bit, and we know that they have serious economic problems as well,” she said.

“Jamaica has always been that neighbour that steps in to help. If you think of, for example, when they had the earthquake, we had members of the Jamaica Defence Force going there for weeks on end, we had the Jamaica Red Cross going there, and so we have always responded in a way to assist. I see this assistance in the same kind of context, given the unrest that’s happening there now,” said the children’s advocate.

She, however, cautioned the Government about making similar attempts to take more or all the orphans from Haiti.

“I don’t think we have the bandwidth and the capacity to sustain that in a very real way, given our own challenges that we have to take care of here at home, and so my position is that, while we help Haiti, we help our own as well,” said Gordon Harrison.

A week before the arrival of the orphans Minister of Foreign Affairs Senator Kamina Johnson Smith told journalists at a post-Cabinet press briefing that Jamaica would not be accepting all orphans from Haiti.

“I saw a report that seemed to be of the impression that Jamaica was opening our borders to all Haitians orphans or all persons claiming to be Haitian orphans…and that is not at all the case,” said Johnson Smith.

“It’s private charity to private charity that is seeking to take responsibility for the care of these most vulnerable children, given that the orphanage has been under attack from gangs,” she said.