Three young children have been hospitalized because of their malnourished conditions and severe rashes, just hours after they were reunited with their mother who temporarily lost custody when one of them was burnt on his face three months ago.
The children’s mother is to face a charge under the Protection of Children Act, since she re-united with her common-law husband, who was charged with injuring the eldest of the three children.
Up to late last evening, the children, aged five, three and one, were patients at the West Demerara Regional Hospital. The Child Care and Protection Agency (CCPA), in a statement, said that the children will be returned to the custody of the agency while the police would be advised to institute a charge against their mother under Section 49 of the Act. The section states: “A person who by commission or omission wilfully contributes to a child being in need of protection intervention commits an offense and is liable on summary conviction to a fine of $200,000 or to imprisonment for a term of six months.”
The children were brought to the agency’s attention on June 21, after the eldest turned up at a day care center with burns to his face. According to PNCR Parliamentarian Mervyn Williams, he contacted the agency after the matter was brought to his attention and the police were also notified, resulting in the stepfather of the child, who is the father of the two younger children being arrested and charged.
Williams, who was very critical of the operations of the agency and to a larger extent the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security, told this newspaper that three months after the children were removed and placed in the Red Cross Convalescent Home, they were returned to their mother. He said this was done although the mother had reunited with her partner and it was only after he contacted the agency again that it became aware of the situation. He said that if officers had been investigating and not just listening to the mother of the children, they would have known the alleged abuser was back in the home. He also questioned the fact that the children had to be hospitalized soon after they were returned to their mother, although they had been in the custody of the state in the intervening period.
Stabroek News contacted the agency and it confirmed in a statement that the three children were removed from their parents after the older child was burnt in the face. According to the statement, the children were placed in the Red Cross home where they were “showing strong signs of grieving for their mother.” It was stated that during this period several counseling sessions were held with the mother and interventions were made in an effort to make her domestic situation better, to facilitate her being the caregiver of her children whom she begged to be returned to her. It was pointed out that placing children in institutions is never the first choice of the agency since children thrive better in home settings. Because the children were grieving, they were not eating, according to the statement, and it was confirmed that the children were later hospitalized after showing signs of malnutrition. The agency said that it was “happy” that Williams and another neighbor brought the fact that the mother was back with her husband to its attention, adding that community input is always needed to fight child abuse.
However, Williams maintained that if the officers had been investigating the children’s cases, then they would have been aware that the woman had reunited with her husband and should not have returned the children to a potentially harmful environment. He added that the agency needed to explain how the children became malnourished while in its custody and the fact that they were in such a state that they had to be hospitalized.
‘Terrible’
According to an official at the West Bank Demerara day care center the children once attended, the very afternoon they were returned to their mother, she took them to the center and asked for them to be re-enrolled. “But I tell she no we can’t take them back because they looked terrible,” the official said, “they had rashes all over and their tummies look big, big.”
The mother was advised to take the children to the hospital, which she did and they were immediately admitted. The official said the day care was concerned that the skin rash the children had was contagious and they could not have exposed the other children to it. It was also obvious that the children were in dire need of medical attention, the official added.
Meanwhile, Guyana Red Cross Society Secretary General Dorothy Fraser, when contacted yesterday, said it was “virtually impossible” for the children not to have received a proper diet while being in the Red Cross convalescent home. She said while she did not have direct knowledge about the specific case, she did not believe that the children would have been released in any “unfavourable conditions”. Fraser said it would have been the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security officers who would have been responsible for releasing the children as they have the “protocol to discharge”.
When told that the children had a skin rash, the local Red Cross head said it was “possible” since children are sometimes admitted into the home with scabies which is contagious. Fraser said that was “not often” that malnourished children are taken to the home and she maintained that it was “highly impossible” for them to become malnourished while resident there. She admitted that some children indeed grieve for their parents or relatives when they are initially taken to the home but added that if the children were in such a state that they needed to be hospitalized then staff at the home would have taken them to the hospital and contacted the ministry.
Hot water
The day care worker, giving some details about the burning of the five-year-old, recalled that on June 21, the father of the children took them to the centre, where it was immediately realized that the older child had burns to his face. The official said when questioned, the father said the child had an accident—an explanation that was not believed. When the child was questioned in front of his stepfather, he made certain allegations of being burnt with hot water and the police were immediately contacted. The official said it was requested that the stepfather remain until the police arrived and he did so. As soon as the lawmen arrived, they were forced to rush the child to the hospital where he was seen by a doctor.
The stepfather was then arrested by the police and charged and placed before the court. He was granted bail and soon after he returned to the home.
‘Never worked’
Meanwhile, Williams yesterday told Stabroek News that while the government has said that the system failed in connection with the horrific case involving murdered teenager Neesa Lalita Gopaul, the present case is evidence that the system never worked. He questioned what sort of counseling the officials at the center could have done with the children’s mother in three months that could have properly prepared her to better care for her children. “When you have a mother who could dress her child and send him to day care even though he was badly burnt you have a mother who is in need of serious help. What sort of psychological help could be given in three months? And the ministry is not equipped to give any psychological help,” Williams said.
He does not believe charging the children’s mother who make the situation better and he questioned what sort of care the three children will receive once returned to the state’s care as the record does not demonstrate that they would be well cared for. “You see, if it stinks at the head it stinks at the bottom…,” he said.
Williams said the ministry does not have any secure environment for children between the ages of 14 and 18 who are in “mortal danger.”
The CC&PA does have a home where they take children of that age and it is said to be a secure environment.
Williams also questioned whether there is an information-sharing mechanism between the Human Service and the Education ministries, pointing out that this is all part of the system and not just the protocols that are written for the social workers.
