Children in West Kingston's trauma

Peta-Anne Baker, Contributor

An unintended and potentially beneficial consequence of the events of the past week could be to build consensus about the need to be more strategic in our approach to early childhood development (ECD). A little over a week ago, the Early Childhood Commission (ECC) conducted a review of its five year strategic plan. The plan is a well-researched blueprint that demonstrates an excellent technical grasp of the fact that providing for children in their earliest years requires a multidisciplinary, interagency approach. As our knowledge about the impact of the exposure to violence on the brains of young children has expanded, our valuation of early childhood development has been enhanced.

Professor Maureen Samms-Vaughn, chairman of the ECC, did a persuasive presentation showing how central early childhood development was, not just to the future of an individual child, but to our collective future as a nation. Citing international research, she demonstrated that the highest rate of return on an investment in early childhood development was its impact on reducing crime and violence.

Here, however, is the rub. Although the Jamaican government, private sector, churches and community residents have all been working diligently to improve provisions for our youngest children, the events of this past week forcefully demonstrate how readily setbacks can occur and how urgent the task is.

Two years ago, the ECC set out to register and ultimately licence the early childhood institutions (ECIs) in Jamaica. To date, it has established a relationship with some 1,800 of the more than 2,700 ECIs. I have to say "established a relationship" because, despite all its hard work, the ECC has not yet been able to authorise a single licence (although several hundred permits have been issued). Why? Because some of the agencies responsible for parts of the certification of these institutions lack the basic means to perform their particular function.

Education Minister Andrew Holness who has responsibility for the ECC cannot be faulted for his commitment to the sector. He talks the perfect talk. However, endemic violence and criminality is only one of the factors influencing the likelihood that he will not be able to walk the walk. Another consideration is the administration's laudable commitment to reducing the size of the public debt, involving among other things the containment of its recurrent expenditures. Another less obvious but possibly more significant consideration is the almost religious commitment to a model of service delivery that is incapable of achieving much less sustaining the advances set forth in the ECC's National Strategic Plan.

How will the early childhood sector deal with the approximately 2,500 children from one to four years old in the communities of Tivoli Gardens, Denham Town, Fletchers Land and Hannah Town who have seen and heard last week's events? Much of what they would have witnessed would not be new. These are communities in which, according to the 2001 census, between one third and a half of all children under the age of five were already living in households where a member had been a victim of some kind of criminal violence. However, the scale of this latest experience is another matter.

We cannot be sanguine that the West Kingston scenario will not be recreated in other communities in the rest of the Corporate Area and urban centres across this island. The majority of households in these communities are headed by women in low-wage jobs; in some instances the household head is an older person. In too high a proportion of cases, these young children are already encountering unacceptable levels of exposure to criminal and state violence.

ELEPHANTS IN THE ROOM

There are no guidance counsellors, social workers or psychologists in the basic schools in West Kingston or anywhere else for that matter. The ECC plan does have a proposal for training and appointing a child development specialist for each parish. This specialist would be the person to whom cases of children with developmental or behavioural disorders would be referred. The Ministry of Health, where they would be employed, is more than happy to have this happen. The Ministry of Finance, however, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) looking over its shoulder, cannot say when the funds needed to implement this plan will actually become available. Early childhood institutions in West Kingston could use three or four of the fourteen proposed specialists immediately.

Despite its stated goal of having a "fully resourced [early childhood] sector", the ECC's plan does not rest on an entirely sound footing. This is glaringly apparent with regards to the status of early childhood educators and ECD practitioners. The average basic school teacher, having done as she was encouraged to do and completed the NCTVET Training for Early Childhood workers, will find that she could still be taking home the $16,000 per month she was getting before she did her training.

If she has the good fortune to work in an early childhood institution that caters to lower-middle and middle-class children, she may be lucky to get as much as $25,000 per month. Principals and trained teachers who are similarly "blessed" could earn in the region of $70,000 per month.

One objective of the ECC's strategic plan is to reduce practitioner-student ratios from 1:33 (much higher in many instances) to the desired 1:20. This will mean that we will need more practitioners than who currently work in the sector. The question is, how and what will they be paid? Despite oft repeated reservations about the assumption that parents and 'communities' can raise enough money to adequately compensate the professionals who work in the early childhood sector, the ECC has held firmly to this position. We cannot be surprised when these workers eventually take their skills into a more lucrative market.

The ECD strategy is completely silent on whether and how the majority stakeholders, parents and other primary caregivers will ever come to influence the agenda of the sector. There are the standard proposals for 'parent support' programmes, to 'help' parents perform their functions more effectively. There is no proposal for the development of strong, parent-led organisations capable of not just helping to manage individual institutions, but confidently taking part in determining the direction of the sector as a whole.

Get the elephants One of the legislated functions of the ECC is to advise the Cabinet on ECD policy and to analyse the resource needs of the sector and make recommendations for allocations from the budget. The ECC must interpret this role to include mobilising currently excluded actors like parents, teachers and community leaders to aid in shaping its goals and devising the strategies whereby they will be achieved.

The ECC and the Ministry of Education need to act now to reduce practitioner-student ratios in the most vulnerable communities. The government must assume responsibility for paying teachers and caregivers in these institutions as part of its portfolio of interventions targeted at the most vulnerable. The ECC needs to make sure that their newly hired development officers know how to mobilise principals, parents and community organisations not just to organise a fund-raising fish fry, but also to develop and advocate for their vision for the sector. If these officers do not come with the knowledge and skills needed for this task, they will need to be equipped with them.

Even if we agree that the government cannot fully fund the early childhood sector, the events of the past week help to make the point that comprehensive planning is not always good planning. A sustained and integrated process of restoration is going to be needed in West Kingston and other high-risk environments. It will be a process that is going to call for high levels of ingenuity and dedication.

Strategic investments in the early childhood sector can help not only to address some of the short-term impacts of recent events, but can also lay down a foundation to reduce, if not prevent, the potential for their recurrence in a few short years.

Dr Peta-Anne Baker is the co-ordinator of the Social Work Programme at the University of the West Indies, Mona. She may be contacted at pab.ja2009@gmail.com, or send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com