Dear Christine,
I read the letter in the DAILY NATION of February 2 entitled Young Girls In A Den Of Prostitution.
Even though it is commendable that the “Christian, nurse educator/part-time psychology UWI student” has brought this matter to the attention of THE NATION, the police and the Child Care Board, matters like this will never be resolved until good parents – Christian or not – step up to the plate and become foster and adoptive parents.
UNESCO cannot raise children. The Child Care Board is limited in what it can do unless good mothers and fathers step forward and say: “Here I am. I will do it.”
Maybe Christian, nurse educator/part-time psychology UWI student should call the Child Care Board and offer to become a foster or adoptive parent. I did.
Fostering, adopting or raising a child is not that hard.
The nine-month-old baby I fostered/adopted is now an 18-year-old second-year student at the Barbados Community College. She is a good daughter, too.
My sister in Canada fostered for 22 years even while holding a full-time job and raising her two children.
It is time for Barbadian Christian women and their husbands to stop talking the talk and begin walking the Christian walk by offering their homes as safe places in which to raise children whose biological parents cannot or are not raising them well.
– JL
Dear JL,
Thanks for your letter, and I hope it gets to those people you’d like to reach. I also commend you for being a foster parent.
Due to the fact that the letter which the individual wrote was quite lengthy, I was forced to carry it in an edited form.
Suffice to say, however, that she did reach out to the family, and was rejected.
In fact, she was cursed for trying to help, and for even attempting to assist the mother of the 14-year-old.
According to the Child Care Board, it is not always as easy as it seems. Officials there have disclosed that in many cases the individuals who really need help refuse to accept the aid they are given. I have seen this time and again.
I recall a case just last year where a 19-year-old orphan with no real place to call home blatantly refused to be placed with a well-respected, “well-to-do family” which also offered her a job.
At times some of the individuals who write for help in securing employment refuse to spend any reasonable amount of time on the job. And it hurts!
I have come to the conclusion more than once that some of these young boys and girls want to have their freedom to do as they please.
Yes, they are willing to have you supply them with something to eat, but they want their own “homes”. They would tell you this without hesitation.
Still, I know that all are not in the same boat. Some accept the help.
You may be able to take a person out of a particular district, but it is hard to take the district out of the person.
What they also need more than a home is education – not the kind they will receive at school – but education about the facts of life.
They need parents/people who will love them enough to set them on the right paths.
Too many of our young people are refusing the help and love of their parents and are bent on living their lives as they please. Some will tell you they want nothing to do with their parents – even when the parents are trying to help.
My response is not to play down what you have said, but to show you that it is not always as easy as you think.
Still, I hope that individuals – Christians and non-Christians – will reach out and offer to assist in any way they can – even if the offer to help is rejected.
– CHRISTINE
