There are still some dark, hidden areas of Maltese society. Despite our increasing affluence and conspicuous consumption, if you venture away from the prosperity of Sliema, St Julian’s, Mdina, Lija and Balzan, you will find lurking in the undergrowth parts of Maltese society which will give you pause for thought and may even shock you out of your comfortable image of Malta as a country that is homogeneous and free from social inequality.
It may even cause our feather-bedded politicians to take action.
There is mounting evidence that the incidence of poverty and social dislocation is increasing. While not all those affected are necessarily poor, many inevitably are. The National Statistics Office has estimated that about 20% of Maltese are “at risk of poverty” (a fairly elastic phrase meaning income below the poverty threshold, materially deprived and doing low level work).
These people represent a vulnerable section of Maltese society. But there is an even darker corner lying in the most unlikely of places at the very heart of one of Malta’s greatest institutions: the Church.
Historically, until the arrival of the modern state, the Church, virtually alone, combined the duties of today’s ministers for education and social security. Throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries, its work in the fields of education and social care was pivotal in addressing abject poverty in Malta.
It has suited successive governments and the Church to maintain a Janus-like relationship in the social care field, especially when it comes to looking after children in residential homes, which are entirely run by the Church.
The Church sees these homes as an essential part of its mission to serve the poor. It runs over a dozen residential homes for children. They house about 180 to 200 children aged from newly-born to 18 years. The homes are run in-so-far-as-possible like “normal households”, caring fully for their physical, spiritual, emotional, educational and psychological needs.
The staff who care for the children in the residential homes are members of religious orders – Ursuline, Franciscan and Augustinian nuns and others. There are in total about 40 nuns deployed in groups of three or four to each home, supported by part-time care workers whose numbers depend on what can be afforded.
These dedicated and hard-working nuns are largely untrained. But they are responsible for coping with children from some of the most dysfunctional and broken homes in Malta. The children placed in residential care come to the homes suffering from emotional upheaval and more often than not are in a traumatised state.
Before arriving at the homes they will have faced serious problems at home often involving physical, emotional, sexual and psychological abuse, addiction to drugs, alcohol or gambling, domestic violence, separated or divorced parents, prostitution and extreme parental neglect.
These children have suffered great emotional instability and their experiences have a long-lasting impact on them. As one devoted carer described them: “Most of the children are hyper-active, have poor anger management skills, limited social skills, sleep disturbance, temper tantrums and unresolved emotional issues.”
On entering the Church home, they are faced with the reality of separation from their parents. Many have difficulty adapting to their new surroundings and sharing their “home” with complete strangers. They invariably react with aggression both towards their natural families, which have let them down and abandoned them, and to society in general. They direct this anger at those caring for them in the residential home. In their attempts to escape their pain, they inflict pain on others.
The government is, in effect, using the nuns as cheap labour – in a phrase, ‘precarious employment’
These children are clearly in need of emotional support and the limitless patience of the staff who care for them, supported by professional helpers: psychiatrists, family psychologists, counsellors and family therapists.
However, the nub of the problem is none of this actually happens. Or, if it does, it is inadequate. Most homes are understaffed and under-resourced. The hierarchy of the Church tends to run them at arm’s length. These are the Church’s Cinderellas.
Although the religious orders who run these homes do so with extreme dedication, love and genuine care for the children, the conditions under which they operate are positively Dickensian. They work for inhumanely long hours. They have no time to re-charge themselves emotionally or socially. Because the nuns are worn out, they cannot discharge their duties towards the children properly. The psychological and other professional support needed is provided by Aġenzija Appoġġ, but the agency is also greatly overstretched and only applies a band-aid.
As to resources, the homes receive an allowance from government for each child in care, but this is minimal when compared to the costs of food, clothes and daily upkeep of the children. The bulk of their funding comes from the Church, which in turn is largely dependent on donations. The Church contributes from their central funds and each home attempts – with various degrees of success – to raise money.
The Maltese Church’s financial budget is under considerable strain with annual deficits regularly recorded. The policy issue that must be faced is whether the role the Church has filled in this field for centuries is any longer sustainable or desirable in modern Malta. The bottom line is that the government is off-loading a considerable part of social work for which the State is ultimately responsible at low cost to itself.
Should the central government carry a greater part of the burden?
The government is, in effect, using the nuns as cheap labour – in a phrase, “precarious employment” which this government has vowed to eradicate.
What is to be done? It is clear from my reading of the reports prepared by the Children’s Commissioner, the Foundation for Social Services and Aġenzija Appoġġ that, in language beloved of sociologists, there is “too much fragmentation as a result of sectoral boundaries that are not always permeable to collaboration across sectors”.
This tells me that while nominally coordination and cooperation between Church and government agencies should occur, integration is lacking in practice.
Although there is a place for the Church’s contribution as a major partner in the increasing efforts to deal with neglected and disadvantaged children in society, there is a compelling case for government to shoulder ultimate responsibility for the whole of this area of social care instead of simply farming it out to the Church.
This means not only providing adequate financial resources for the staffing and running of the homes but also, as importantly, setting in place proper benchmark standards of care and adequate staffing ratios between children and carers. These do not currently exist.
Secondly, there appears to be no central, non-ecclesiastical supervisory authority to ensure standards of care and accountability in these homes are met. Transparent lines of responsibility and accountability should be laid down with the Minister for the Family and Social Responsibility – not the Church – being held politically accountable for what goes on in the residential homes.
This means the establishment of a clear chain of command with an executive team reporting to the minister made up of representatives from government, the Church, and the professional support services.
The current arms-length relationship between the State and the Church on children’s residential homes is in urgent need of revision if the ultimate well-being of the children placed in care is to be achieved.