Tackle root causes of deviant behaviour

WHEN dealing with a child who has been deviant, our first course of action should not be to jail or detain them, rather we need to get to the root of the problem and deal with it.

This comment came from Attorney General and Minister of Home Affairs, Adriel Brathwaite, as he spoke at the start of the Action for Justice march against child abuse, which began in Heroes’ Square yesterday morning.

“We need to focus more on what causes our children to behave the way that they’re behaving; and as a society we need to respond appropriately,” he said.

Brathwaite announced that he was looking to formalise the informal relationship between the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Education, Science, Technology and Innovation; and include the Parent-Teacher Associations, the judiciary and the unions, so that they are better able to respond to the needs of children.

“I don’t believe for one minute what we’re faced with is beyond us as a country; we just need to understand that the challenges we have are not the challenges we had in the ’60s and ’70s. Our children are exposed to more things that are not Barbadian and exposed to things on the Internet that we were not exposed to as children, so we have to respond differently,” he said.

Brathwaite noted that it was for that reason he believed we needed to work as a community to figure out ways to get to the root of the problem that each child faces and ways to help them overcome them.

If parents or guardians are having difficulty with their child or ward, the Attorney General suggested that they call either him, the Child Care Board, Action for Justice or the Royal Barbados Police Force, so that they can do everything in their power to help the child so that he or she does not have to come into contact with the Criminal Justice System.