CHILDREN’S HOME RAGE

Simmering tensions at the state-run Maxfield Park Children’s Home in St Andrew erupted on Tuesday after angry staff protested the arrest and charge of a co-worker accused of using a piece of board to slap a student in the head for sleeping in class.

The female worker was hauled before the court on Friday to answer to charges of administering corporal punishment.

Staff became incensed after the details of the investigations were unsealed in court, The Gleaner understands.

But employees of the children’s home have rubbished the allegations against their colleague.

One woman, who said she is the house parent for the child, joined the protest outside the facility’s gate on Tuesday. She said all the staff there would have been negligent if the allegations that the child was beaten unconscious were true.

“For a child to be beaten with a piece of board, the child has to have some evidence of bruise or some swelling, and the child has not been to any doctor. It is a big fat lie!” the woman said.

The house parent said the child at the centre of the incident is traumatised.

The unsettling scene was another blot on Child Month as the country continues to grapple with a spate of incidents involving the abuse and killing of youth.

Chairperson of the board, Nadeen Spence, told The Gleaner that she visited the facility on Tuesday where the children appeared to safe following the two-and-half-hour protest.

She said based on her reading of the situation, the anger was not directed at the children’s home.

“They were protesting the police investigation and the charges being laid against their colleague,” Spence told The Gleaner Tuesday evening.

Under the law, staff at the facility should not protest for more than three hours.

Among the issues causing tension at the children’s home is the perceived abused of liberty wards suffered.

The workers there claim the children sometimes play the victim, with some of them shielded behind the law.

“The little weh unnu pay we, we haffi a save fi [stop] we from go prison. We haffi a save fi pay lawyer!

“Down to last night one of the the boy dem threaten fi stab me inna me sleep,” one of the placard-bearing workers dressed in blue shouted in anger.

But Spence insisted that caregivers at the home could not be allowed to abuse children, even in difficult circumstances.

She pointed out that the Child Care and Protection Act prohibits corporal punishment in state-operated facilities.

“One of the issues I hear them raise is that the children give trouble, and the children are difficult. The issue is not that children will not be difficult or children will not give trouble, but what punishment is appropriate,” said Spence.

“… They are asking, so what if dem spit pon me? Wah if them lick me? … We always have to find the appropriate response and the regulations tell you what punishment should look like in a children’s home,” Spence, a university manager, contended.

romario.scott@gleanerjm.com