Director of the Child Protection Agency, Ann Greene, said a fair amount of work had begun since legislation was enacted setting up her office earlier this year, including the initial launch of a local foster care programme, which she referred to as “extremely important in shaping the lives of those young ones in need of nurturing.”
Outside of the numbers on file, she estimated that a sizable number of children in the society were in need of better care, care that many parents were unable to provide. The Child Protection Agency, which falls under Ministry of Human Services, was established to focus specifically on the welfare of children.
Foster care remains an area largely untapped until now, Greene said in a recent interview with Stabroek News. She underscored the importance of the programme saying that many children currently institutionalized in the system “need the care of a family.”
“Children should not be in institutions, they should be with a family, caring, and nurturing families is what they need… living in an institution is a last resort,” Greene said.
And with the legislation in place her agency has started screening “potential foster care parents.” Greene said that several possible persons had been screened and had been subjected to a range of checks in keeping with the rules – background, medical and police checks.
The rules governing the foster care programme were fairly simple, Greene said, disclosing that the criteria included providing a child or children with a safe environment in addition to having acceptable accommodation. She said too that the foster parent/s must be child centered, which she explained as having the child’s interest at heart and ensuring that the child is cared for at all times.
Greene pointed out that government intended to assist foster parents with a monthly package, but she stressed that it was not a large sum. She said that there was scope within the programme to assist in other areas, for example, helping a family to improve accommodation. She noted that the pay package was not intended to draw people who “want to make a business out of this.”
The foster care programme is expected to be launched officially in July and the Child Protection Agency is currently preparing 40 children for the first batch. However, Greene said that the need existed for more foster parents.
“We are looking for people right now, hoping that they will come forward and show an interest in becoming a foster parent, and we are not asking for a great deal,” Greene added.
She said further that they were not necessarily asking for foster parents to be a married couple, since according to her, “some single parents out there have the capacity to be foster parents.”
Spin offs
Greene further emphasized the need for a foster care programme by pointing to the cycle of abused and neglected children who grow up to become abusers. She said there was an urgent need to “provide them with the care and support they need early.”
From her substantial career in social services Greene has seen many young victims internalize the pains of a disrupted childhood and later act out.
“There are a host of spin-off effects in the life of a child who is abused and neglected, and who are never offered the opportunity to know what it means to be part of a family that cares,” she said.
Greene stated that many young adults and adults in the society were today operating from their “point of pain.” She explained that the pain they internalized as children is the pain used to deal with others.
But while foster care has obvious benefits, she said, the goal was to be able to reunite children with their biological parents “when the time is right.” She said that in the case of children who were orphans, plans would be made to have them find a permanent or substitute home.
Adoption
Addressing questions on the status of the Children’s Bill which was recently passed in Parliament, Greene said that it strengthened the previous laws relating to adoptions, but more importantly, it was child centred. She noted that the new law empowered children to be more involved in the adoption process by right and not by choice.
She said too that the new law allowed for the adoption process to move faster, though she pointed out that there had always been a waiting list for adoptions. The new adoption laws made it mandatory for a child who was old enough to have a say in whether he/she favoured the adoption.
Child abuse
Greene pointed out that there were increased reports of child abuse, but according to her a recently enacted law now made it mandatory for the police to report a matter of child abuse to the Child Protection Agency. She called it a fresh beginning of increased collaboration between the police and the ministry.
The challenge now, according to her, is to engage the community, and get families to assist them in child care. She said that people needed to speak out more about such cases and report them to the police.
“Child care is everybody’s business which means that the community must get involved,” Greene added.