Reprimanded!

Attorney at law and legal consultant Faith Marshall-Harris. (File Picture)

By BRYAN WALKER | Sun, September 09, 2012 - 12:10 AM

Children need a safe place where they can be housed and protected from abuse, parental neglect or harmful environments other than the Dodds facility, says a former Juvenile Court magistrate.

Attorney at law and legal consultant Faith Marshall-Harris, who is working on reforming Barbados’ laws relating to children and parenting, said this was critical as she chided parents for exposing their children to dangers and influences that could have negative effects.

Speaking against the backdrop of a recent case in which a mother was before the courts for failing to send her child to school for almost an entire year, as well as the recent controversy over a young child gyrating behind an adult female on Kadooment Day, Marshall-Harris told the SUNDAY SUN in an interview that many adults were failing as parents and so children needed adequate alternative facilities to save them.

“Our laws call for places of safety where, if a child is in any jeopardy or at risk, you can send it to a place of safety, and not just the . . . Government Industrial School (GIS). Where we fall short is that the places of safety end up being reform school [the GIS] or the Child Care Board’s children’s homes. Where a child is at risk at home with its parents, the children’s homes don’t really have the capacity to look after that child. So we need to live up to our legislation and actually create places of safety,” she stressed.

Please read the full story in today’s SUNDAY SUN, or in the eNATION edition.

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Posted by Bim Bum 8 months, 2 weeks ago: Barbados needs PARENTING CLASSES that must be attended
-before a Pregnancy License is granted!

Anyone found to be pregnant withOUT said license will be aborted by the State.

________________________
Sound far-fetched?
WAIT til global overpopulation exceeds 10 Billion people.
WAIT til BARBADOS' overpopulation problem exceeds 500,000 igrunt Bajans on this little rock!
You ain't seen nothing yet!

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Posted by Frank Husbands 8 months, 2 weeks ago: This lady is a brilliant legal luminary.Mrs Marshal-Harris should also use her brains to come up with ways of funding her proposals.Ideas cost money all these thinkers should not just stop at finding good ideas but continue to think on how to finance these good ideas.

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Posted by J. Payne 8 months, 2 weeks ago: The Empire building perhaps could serve this purpose. It is too small to be a theatre. There's other places in Bridgetown that can host as many people as the Empire. The theatre at the Central Bank for example.

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Posted by Pan Wallie 8 months, 2 weeks ago: We have talked for decades about places of safety for children. We have been shouting for longer than I care to remember about archaic legislation. We have heard precious little if anything about punishment for parents. 45% of the time when children are remanded to the GIS, some parents should also have been escorted a little further up (or down) the road to HMP. We repeatedly allow parents to make excuses for their slackness and Barbados accepts it. As for attending parenting classes? That has been tried too, but always seem to come up short because we accept all sorts of meaningless excuses. Interestingly enough, where there are organisations willing to provide services on weekends or after hours, parents are unwilling to avail themselves. No, not as long as there are social activities to attend. And just where is the legislation to make anything mandatory? And even if there was legislation, would it be put into effect? Would there ever be accountability? By the way is the fee for non attendance at school, still $50? In short if the fine is only as minute as the lottery money, the pudding and souse money, the weekend fete money or the hairdo money, which indifferent parent does one expect to care?