Children’s Advocate wants end to children begging and selling

For some Jamaican children, climbing into warm beds at night or having a strong parental figure to protect and provide for them is an experience they will never know.

Instead, these children have been given no other choice but to beg or sell to survive. Children's Advocate Diahann Gordon Harrison told THE STAR that the issue is "far too common for comfort" and "really should not be happening". She lamented that not many people report the matter, preventing many children from being helped or protected.

"We know it exists, we're seeing it as we go and come. But if I am to say that this is the category where we receive the most reports about, then that would not be accurate because we don't get a number of formal complaints," Gordon Harrison said. She added that there are many factors that lead children to sell or beg on the street.

"It could be that it's a supervision issue, and they [children] want things so they decide to go and hustle. It could be that it is a decision taken by parents or caregivers that say 'Look, we have a critical financial problem in our family so everybody has to go out and be a part of the process so that we can survive'," Gordon Harrison said.

Senior Superintendent Steve McGregor, head of the police's Community Safety and Security Branch, said that the trend of children selling and begging on the street is due to a lack of effective parenting skills.

"These kids are just loose and the parents, some of them just don't know what to do, enuh," McGregor said. "Most of our parents would have to be taken through a new learning issue, and how to deal with this generation. They are not as strict as they used to be like say in my growing up years."

Gordon Harrison told THE STAR that in order to quell the growing number of children selling and begging on the streets, each situation needs to be examined "to find out what are the push factors that got those children there and what kind of support is needed". She added that solving the issue requires the involvement of the entire society including the court.

"Where children are in vulnerable situations, then they are really in need of care and protection and that means that a process need to be kick-started for the court to make that kind of enquiry, and the support be given to the parents at home, or to the supervision mechanism, or sometimes it's a matter of education," Gordon Harrison said.

McGregor said he saw the need for a curfew programme for children to be implemented in certain communities, including Denham Town.

"The citizens are the main architects and we try to make the citizens take lead, plus they are the ones who know the community and try to get them [children] off the road at a certain time so that they are not exposed to violence," McGregor said. "The monitors, those are the ones who go around. So they meet with each other and look at the best practices." He added that he has witnessed these community monitors stepping in to support parents and help children with their school work.

Gordon Harrison told THE STAR that she believes more programmes like this need to be implemented in other communities across the island.

"That is a model programme that if we could have persons who are willing in their communities to do something like that to replicate the success that they [Denham Town] have had, we would now be active citizens in the protection of children," said Gordon Harrison.

She also encouraged citizens to call the Child Protection and Family Services Agency when they see these children selling or begging on the streets.

"These are children who are presumed to be in need of care and protection and that should trigger the calling of the toll free number of 211 so that the information can be passed on as to where these children are seen, [and] what they are seen engaging in," she said.