By Trudy Simpson, Staff ReporterSTAFF IN state and privately run children's homes and places of safety are facing many challenges, including a lack of financial resources to properly evaluate and help children new to the system, says Sister Suzan Frazer, director of the Alpha Boys' Home on South Camp Road, Kingston.
Sister Suzan, also director of St. John Bosco Children's Home in Manchester, said many new children run away or destroy property. "They don't like the structure and the discipline because they haven't had any," she said.
Many institutions are also struggling financially and, according to a recently released report on these facilities, are in need of repairs to dilapidated buildings, some of which were constructed in the 1920's.
Finance is a big worry to Sister Suzan, whose privately run children's homes rely on mostly fund-raising efforts and sponsorship.
"I only get about 40 per cent of actual need to run this institution," she said. She receives Government funding totalling $1.6 million per month, split between two homes she operates, but she needs a monthly instalment of $4 million to run both institutions. It works out to a per diem of $1,100 per week for each of the 300 children in both homes, she said.
The money is used to pay bills and other expenses as well so there is often not enough money to pay for special help for traumatised staff and those children, who bear scars from lives they led before coming into the system.
The report states that many children are in state care, because they have lost a loved one to death, were abandoned, made homeless, neglected, burnt or punished severely for simple issues such as taking porridge. Some are sexually, physically and emotionally abused by parents and guardians.
"The society needs to get a grip on what is happening, generally, with regard to sex and abuse. We are getting everybody tarred with the same brush right now. It's demotivating," Sister Suzan said.
She explained that there have been incidents of children being hit, but not so much as to damage them and, in some cases, staff members were defending themselves from attacks.
BEHAVIOURAL PROBLEMS
"I can't say there has never been an incident (of violently hitting children), but I write letters on their files and, if it happens twice, the staff member is fired the third time. I may end up with a bloody nose here and there, but I may also end up with a staff member being attacked with a machete and a stone. They are not in combat duty... but especially where the kids are 17 and 18, they can stand taller than the staff," she said.
"Some children are difficult to work with, the parents (who still play a minimal role in their children's lives) are impossible and we got the society on our back," she said.
She said many good staff members and children's facilities are getting a beating, following the release of a report which outlined breaches and abuses in some child care facilities.
She said many good employees are now de-motivated since the release of the report. Some now want to leave the system.
"That is my biggest challenge right now, telling them that they are damned if they do and damned if they don't and that they are not to quit right now," Sister Suzan told The Gleaner on Friday.
"They are telling me, is it that none of us have done anything right?" she explained.
Since the release of the report and subsequent media attention, many staff members have been verbally attacked and called names such as "b...y man" while on the streets, said Sister Suzan.
"We need to look at what we are doing and that pattern that we have set up and how we have made scapegoats out of everybody in the children's homes. Children need to be heard but so do caregivers," she said, adding that several successful people come from children's homes.
