Study suggests Church, state action in favour of problem children

The Church and the state should seek to work together to deliver a master plan on the services for children with very challenging behaviour so these would not fall through the social safety net, a report just released advises.

"With today's greater knowledge of the psychological factors affecting a child's life and development, we have the duty to revise the systems we currently sustain and see if they can be adapted to the needs of today and tomorrow," the report, that tackles current services and residential care, pointed out.

"If, on the other hand, they have outgrown their usefulness then they should be done away with and new solutions actively sought."

This report, one of five, has been commissioned by the Commissioner for Children, Sonia Camilleri, and will come under the spotlight tomorrow during a national conference titled Addressing The Pain: Children And Young People With Very Challenging Behaviour.

The report highlights the importance for someone to understand children when they manifest challenging behaviour, keeping in mind that those who experienced rejection and abuse were at a greater risk of possibly starting on the road towards very dangerous behaviour as adolescents.

It was crucial to establish different services and not take a one-size-fits-all approach. It recognised that it took time to develop appropriate services but it was not impossible to do so.

The present fragmentation of services had to be countered by a master plan that could chart out a road map for the development of services to children.

Apart from that, existing policies had to be harmonised and a network structure of services identified, and, where necessary, built.

"Concern over excessive case loads and waiting lists that render the work of certain services necessarily superficial, was also a theme that came up, again and again, in our interviews and this is another reason why there should be a high level of coordination in making use of scarce human and financial resources," the report pointed out.

In order to help the children, services had to be modelled on three principles: early intervention, family-based work, and systemic approaches.

"In order to better reach children with very challenging behaviour who often tend to fall through the safety net of services that are ultimately set up for their benefit, we need to create more community-based services, rather than investing in centralised services and units," it continued.

"One such service could be that of mentoring a young person within the community. This is a way of keeping children in their own nuclear or extended families, unless their families are abusive."

In the context of legal provision, it was felt that the way things stood, the system left a lot of space for abuse, rejection and abandoning children in care for years on end.

"We believe that there is a need for legislation which deals with the termination of parental rights, for instance. Meanwhile, in cases of abuse, justice needs to be seen to be done with the perpetrators, otherwise, it's no wonder that children will remain angry at a society that has let them down badly and victimised, rather than vindicated them."

Structures for funding and coordinating services and setting sensible mechanisms in all areas related to vulnerable children should be established within the Civil Code.

The professionals, who drew up the report, hoped that while they worked to paint a picture of the situation - warts and all - the information they provided should not be taken out of context or politicised in any way.

While it recognised the strengths of the services, the report also acknowledged that "shadows" formed part of the reality and had to be addressed, otherwise the educational services for children with very challenging behaviour would remain hampered by a number of issues. One of these was that not enough was happening to prevent children from finding themselves in extreme situations.

It also pointed out that the fact that some young people were sent to Yours, the juvenile correctional facility, because the court decided that their home environment was more harmful for them and that there was nowhere else to go, was a weakness of the services.

"A limited but consistent pattern of young people in this predicament has been established and professionals fear this could result in a population at Yours that includes children staying on in prison because they are social cases," the report said.

It pointed out that about a third of children with very challenging behaviour who end up at the Young People's Unit of Mount Carmel Hospital or at Yours, had been placed in care when they were still babies, which may account for the aggravation of the problems. It added that the practice of keeping babies in an institution was considered obsolete in Europe, if not downright harmful.

"Change may not come about easily. However, when it is necessary one might as well embrace the challenges that it presents and invest in our children's future to mark it with hope," the report concluded.

Those interested in attending tomorrow's national conference can send an e-mail to daniela.debono@gov.mt.