CHILDLINK Inc., in keeping with a recently signed agreement with the European Union (EU), intends to focus more this year on empowering children in difficult circumstances.As Programme Director Omattie Madray told the Guyana Chronicle, the organisation has as its focus this year the expansion of Child Advocacy Centres (CACs), creating a Child Rights Alliance (CRA), and pushing for adoption of an alternative care policy for children.

ChildLink recently received from the EU €200,000 to support its work, and Madray noted that the money, the equivalent of G$75M, will see her organisation doing work at the grassroots level on the issue of Child Rights and Child Protection.

“In 2016,” she said, “we want to look at expanding the Child Advocacy Centres (CAC). At the moment, there is one in Regions 3 (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara) and 4 (Demerara-Mahaica), and one in Region 5 (Mahaica-Berbice). We are currently in discussion with partners to expand the CACs.”

Madray said that while it is her organisation’s intention to have CACs established in two other regions, she could not, at the moment, say which regions.

ROLE OF CACs
Currently, CACs provide support to children who have experienced sexual violence; and given its mandate, Madray said ChildLink would like to see not only more children accessing the service, but parents as well.

“Through the Centres,” she told the Guyana Chronicle, “we can do much more strengthening of parental involvement in providing care to their children, and (we could have) a greater level of awareness where those Centres are placed for the prevention of sexual violence against children.”

She explained that when children visit the Centres, they would have already been abused, and are dealing with the trauma associated with the abuse they suffered.

At the Centres, counsellors work with the children to help them cope and deal with the issue of sexual violence, but unfortunately, those sessions are not sufficient.

“It does not go away,” she said, adding: “Ideally, we would like much more work to be done on the prevention aspect of child sexual violence. That’s the focus of the first quarter. We are aiming to look at how we can bring more partners on board to expand the child advocacy services.”
NEW INITIATIVE
In the second quarter, Madray is hoping that a new initiative, The Child Rights Alliance (CRA), will get off the ground, as the idea is to work with a range of local stakeholders in the area of child protection, whether in the prevention of violence against children, those doing intervention work, or those doing prevention work across the country.

“CRA will look at how we create a national network — a national alliance,” she said. “The project will work in Regions 3, 4 and 5 more specifically, and it will actually complement the services of CAC and support the awareness and prevention campaigns based on the results of the CACs.”

Noting that there are a number of cases of mothers leaving their children to go into the interior to work, Madray said those children are abused either by persons close to them or by strangers.

“There are perpetrators around that are taking advantage of those children, and we have seen an increase in reporting. More adults are coming forward and calling the Child Protection Agency (CPA); coming to make reports, and therefore you would have seen an increase in reported cases of all forms of violence against children.”

UNDER-REPORTING
But in spite of this new trend, where we’re seeing an increase in the reporting of Child Sexual Violence, Madray said under-reporting is still a major problem.

“When we go into the communities, we hear a lot more of what is happening on the ground,” she said, so the project will do a lot more community-based work in Regions 3, 4 and 5. Whereas the CAC is placed in one location, families come to the Centre based on referrals from the CPA. The Child Rights Alliance will work with agencies in those regions to have more prevention work done at the level of the community,” she disclosed.

ChildLink intends to also focus on children growing up without parental care, especially those who are growing up in orphanages.

Madray said that, approximately 10 years ago, an assessment was done by the organisation, looking at the number of children that were in orphanages and other similar institutions; why they were there, and what were the contributory factors.

“We found that there were about 500 children in about 25 children’s orphanages across the nation — Regions 3, 4, 5, 6,” she said. She noted, too, that over that 10-year period, her organisation has observed an increase of about 250 to 300 children living in orphanages in the identified regions.

“We want to find out a little bit more about why that number is growing, “ Madray said. “We want to work more closely with the Social Protection Ministry, and more specifically the CPA, to find out what sort of system needs to be in place for when a child is engaging the State for services; what antenna goes up for the social worker that would see a child being more likely placed in an orphanage rather than go to an extended family.”

Madray explained that the Ministry of Social Protection has several new services that are aimed at protecting children, but she feels that each family has different challenges, and some of those challenges result in families becoming unsafe for the children, thus the children have to be taken away.

“But when those children are taken in care, what systems are in place to help those children to be returned to their families reintegrated? We will use the study as a baseline to build a stronger re-integration process with the Ministry; it is part of the ministry’s plan for this year. We would like to complement that plan, and be able to help make the re-integration process for children,” she said.

NEW STUDY
Madray is hopeful that the study can commence later this year. The organisation has worked with the Ministry of Social Protection on strengthening alternative family-based care services in 2013-2015; and, up until March 2015, was reinforcing “the need for greater family-based care for children who have experienced trauma, rather than placing them in orphanages,” she explained.

“A number of children were re-integrated with their families; lots of work done with families to ensure they understand better parenting etc.”

An alternative care policy was drafted following wide consultations, and it is Madray’s hope that the findings of the research will push the Ministry to “embrace the policy.”

Children coming into state care shouldn’t automatically go into an institution, which is not necessarily the case. But, the mere idea that the numbers are growing in institutional care, it means that there needs to be a stronger policy; stronger services available to children and families, and look beyond the fact that parents are bad parents, but perhaps (that) they need much, much more support than we really are aware of.”

By implementing the policy, Madray believes, the Ministry of Social Protection and organisations like hers would have a better understanding on what are some of the “deeper issues” facing families.

She believes that parents need to know that help is available, and they should be told how to access that help. “There is a great desire on the part of families to keep their children, but that desire needs to go beyond ‘I want my child with me.’ It should be ‘I want my child with me, in a safe place, where I can provide love and care’.”

By Ariana Gordon