By telling her own private, personal story, Mrs Ericka Gilbert-Hope, who heads the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA) Investigation Unit, has done her fellow Jamaicans a great service.

The child protection administrator told the Sunday edition of this newspaper that at three years old she lost her mother.

She says that up to her teenaged years she was an unruly child apparently driven to antisocial behaviour by pent-up hurt.

That was until a high school principal who was trying to help her come to terms with yet another misdeed, sympathised and listened.

Mrs Gilbert-Hope says, “[J]ust maybe it (unruly behaviour) was as a result of losing my mother at such a tender age. I didn’t get any help — no counselling, nothing — and that is why I mentioned this principal who actually listened; for the first time someone listened…”

Based on experience, Mrs Gilbert-Hope does not believe that any child “just gets up one day and decides” to misbehave.

In her case, a single adult intervened in a good way, most of all, by simply listening, and that made all the difference.

That experience taught her that there are “good” people who care about children, even those who are not theirs. She wanted to be one of those people.

“I decided that this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to be able to transform people’s lives and so I studied counselling and psychology,” Mrs Gilbert-Hope told our reporter.

That determination led to her current job in which, our reporter tells us, Mrs Gilbert-Hope has “dealt first hand with the crushing experiences of some of Jamaica’s most traumatised children, but it is a path from which she hopes never to depart”.

The job has brought pain and tears at times, but Mrs Gilbert-Hope says, “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

Says she: “I realised a lot of [troubled children] just wanted someone to sit and listen to them. I saw them transformed before my very own eyes…”

We hear that Mrs Gilbert-Hope’s colleagues are a breed apart, driven in much the same way as her, to care for children.

We know that there are many others in our schools, children’s homes, communities… individuals we will never hear about, who are also doing their part. That’s just like that school principal who intervened when Mrs Gilbert-Hope needed help. They are all heroes.

It’s important for everyone — Government, private groups, individuals — to recognise that the need to help children never ends and that proper guidance for them is essential.

The Sunday Observer also highlighted a workshop for 2,000 parents and educators sponsored by Sandals Foundation, the related Beaches Resort, and Sesame Foundation which is connected to the decades-old, globally-famous children’s television programme Sesame Street.

Workshop participants benefited from a handbook to help adults strategise for children’s emotional well-being.

“Empowering children with the tools to navigate challenges, big and small, from an early age lays the foundation for their lifelong emotional health and happiness,” says Ms Rosemarie Truglio, an executive at Sesame Workshop.

Children need all the help that’s possible if we are to secure a safer, brighter, viable future for our country and people. We must all stand shoulder to shoulder on that mission.