No official figures have been released in a long time but the number of children being abused and neglected across Guyana is said to be alarming, and the question has been raised as to what is government doing about it.
Boys are learning what it means to beg and survive from as young as three and four; girls are running homes in the absence of a parent figure while sexual predators are increasingly taking advantage of children growing up in difficult circumstances.
Though the Mahaica Children’s Home had been in existence for some time now and the Drop-in-Centre offered shelter to street children, the need remained for something more. It came around Cricket World Cup when much activity was going on in the months prior to the hosting of the games — a childcare centre was set aside especially for children removed from the streets and those rescued from vulnerable situations.
“We didn’t do it for World Cup as everyone thought, it was an initiative of Minister Priya Manickchand and one that we pursued with the intention of making a real impact on the lives of Guyanese children,” Coordinator of the Child Care Programme at the ministry, Ann Greene said in a recent interview.
Greene said in just a few months many streets in the city were cleared of children and many others were rescued from their homes. She noted that in many instances, there were no parents to protest any removal from the homes and even after months of caring for the children at the centre, many parents were still to be found.
Parents like those described by Roxanne [only name given] who sat down with Stabroek News two weeks ago. What she remembers of the past year was that her mother left home and never looked back; her father who was once there was suddenly absent and her younger siblings needed someone to care for them. She turned out to be that someone and the child who once had an interest in school stopped attending and started working.
Roxanne found work in a cook shop a few yards away from home and remained in the employ there until someone contacted the Human Services Ministry. The ministry went in, removed her and was able to place the younger children in the care of a relative. She is yet to hear from her mother but Roxanne is back in school, doing well and looking forward to going back home to be with relatives and her siblings. According to her, she had forgotten what it felt like to be in school.
Greene, who has a substantial background in childcare services, told this newspaper that the childcare centre was not set up to separate families. She said the aim was to rescue, care for and then reintegrate the children into their families. However, the reintegration aspect has been most difficult given that a few months, or even a year, are not enough to fix what is wrong in many Guyanese homes.
She explained that many parents have financial, social and mental issues while some have all combined, which means there is no way their situation can change in a few months. Greene said the amount of resources needed to fix families such as those is so great that the ministry realises immediately that it is a great challenge to protect such children. But it is trying with the limited resources it has, she opined. She said some parents are offered financial assistance while the ministry went as far as to place some parents before the courts in relation to incest. She said this was a growing problem, but the ministry has moved to the stage of prosecuting the offending parents.
After the children are removed from the streets and their homes, she said, there are many adjustment issues. There are those who want to escape from the centre particularly the children who grew up on the streets while others just want to go back home.
But with time and a dedicated staff things have changed and the progress has been notable, according to her. However, there still persists the challenge of getting the street children to move from the purely survival skills that they have acquired over the years to social skills which they lack.
Saving one child
Greene noted that there are many children out there who will probably never be rescued for various reasons. She said many children grow up being abused and that cycle repeats itself when those children are not rescued which is why saving one child at a time could mean saving one generation at a time.
“When we take a child and provide the necessary care that child is able to see that life is more than being abused and feeling hurt. Hopefully, that child will pass this on and it continues one generation after the next,” Green explained.
Currently the centre has 51 children, which is the capacity number, though she pointed out that some of the children would be reintegrated with their families soon.
She said many of them protest having to leave the centre, but they accept it eventually because the ministry does follow-ups with them and spend time working with the families.
Street-wise
It was at the one year anniversary of the centre two weeks ago that we met Roxanne. Also there was Dillon, who grew up believing the streets were better than what was at home. A true product of the streets, he grew up begging and roaming. He knows every crack in the city and where it is dangerous to go after certain hours but Dillon did not get streetwise on his own. His mother who died many years ago taught him how to survive on the streets having lived the life of a beggar herself.
“Sometimes when ya beg ya gat to be careful cause people don’t always mean well, if ya know what ah mean,” Dillon told us. He smiled after making the statement then related that for his age, 12 years, he has seen and heard a lot on the road. The young boy said he was picked up off the streets and taken to the care centre against his will, and he wanted to break out the next day but his plan was foiled after a friend he confided in alerted the caregiver.
But a year later, Dillon is not sure he will make it outside the centre and his time to leave his nearing. He is fearful that the streets may draw him back, but since he is at school and making friends and has people around who seem to care, he feels that his life could turn out differently.
“When my mother dead I ain’t had nobody to look out for me, now I surrounded by people who ain’t family but they like me,” the child said flashing another smile.
