On Tuesday the 22nd and Wednesday the 23rd of January, the study group: Child Abuse: doing nothing is not an option’, organized a second conference about this delicate topic. This combined with training for professionals in how to recognize signs of (potential) abuse and how to talk about this amongst each other, with parents and within the community. The conference was held on Statia. The theme of this conference was: Putting the child’s safety First!
Following the conference on Child Abuse that was held on June 14th 2012
a study group was formed that would further take on the task of figuring out how we as an island and professionals will tackle child abuse.The study group addressed the fact that the community plays a major role in tackling child abuse. One of the primary goals should be to educate the community: the parents, the children, as well as professionals and government.
With educating the community the study group means that many people are not really aware of what is considered abuse. When people hear about abuse they think of physical abuse such as hitting or sexual inappropriate behaviour. But abuse goes much further and is more basic then what many may believe. Verbal abuse is considered as much a problem in the community as physical abuse. Calling children dumb, telling them they will never achieve anything, ignoring a child, having children constantly babysitting younger siblings or having adult conversations in front of children, already hampers a safe development of the child which, if not noticed, constitutes into child abuse.
‘Any and everything that hurts or hampers a child’s physical, mental, and social development’, is considered Child Abuse, according to the study group. In the approach, the Positive Parenting Program (Triple P) is central, which mainly responds to how, as a parent, you can provide your child with an environment, in which it can develop itself in a positive way into a self-conscious and responsible human being. This from the belief that prevention is the key. If we as a community focus on Child’s safety instead of coming in to action when it already has become abuse, we will be breaking the cycle !
The conference and the training are considered a great success. All organizations involved with youth attended the work conference and the training was followed by 27 people of various organizations such as: the schools, the daycare centre, welfare department, Mega D Youth Foundation, Expertise Centre St.Eustatius, Victims Aid, the Police, Court of Guardianship,
the Medical Centre, Churches, GGD and the Centre for Youth and Family.
During the conference diploma’s were given to a number of attendees that recently succesfully completed the Triple P training level 3. They also received a small token of appreciation which was the CD "Voice of the Youth". This CD contains impressive inspiring lyrics written by the youth of Statia and produced by the local artist known as Mega D.