The majority of children who end up at the Youth Intervention Unit within the Royal Police Force of Antigua & Barbuda come from a “broken home”.
That’s according to officers within the unit who are pushing for more awareness of peaceful conflict resolution.
“Most of the children that we have issues here within Antigua & Barbuda are those coming out of a single-parent home”, Constable Rashidi Merrifield said.
His colleague Constable Annika Bowen explained, “seventy-five to eighty per cent of these instances come from a broken home and there’s an issue with the acceptance of step-parent or the father isn’t present or maybe mommy’s lashing out at child or daddy’s lashing out at child because the two parents cannot get along.”
The officers said the poorer the family, the more like there will be these issues.
“Most persons in the middle-class and upper-class economic status have both parents at home so the entire magnitude of persons that we have is found mostly in the lower-class”, Merrifield revealed.
Bowen said the unit has had to intervene for children as young as 9 years old up to those as old as 18.
“If the school suspends them, they don’t go home for let’s say the week or two weeks that they are suspended for, they come to the unit and we will have different sessions with them or if a parent is experiencing difficulties or is having conflicts with his or her child, they will bring them to the unit and after an interview where we will find out what exactly the problem is or where the conflict is arising from then we can address the issue”, she said.
Constable Merrifield added we “have a high success rate, however, there are some instances where it is not necessarily the child but the parent where the child would have been rehabilitated here at the unit, however, as they return home to the same environment, they basically go back into their same behaviour and then they will have to come back to the unit and the process continues. Until the parent itself decides to start changing that is when the child itself can actually follow the part that we set for them.”
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Is this really the case since 80% of the homes in Antigua and Barbuda are broken? You need to work a little harder than that. An actual study should be done and not a subjective “analysis” based on US psychology. I shudder to think that your next post will read “Black children in Antigua and Barbuda are more likely to commit crime”.
They need a tearing bull bud to lash dem in shape.
LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!! Be careful those “rights of the child” people don’t see your comment. LMAO!!!!!
They already seeing what they doing without getting bull bud and I am sure they are the very same ones complaining.
I wonder what kind of home they came from?
Parents have an awesome responsibility. The father is the head of the family, and the family is the nursery of church, school, and society. If the father is weak, irresponsible, and incompetent, then the family, church, school, and society will suffer the consequences. Fathers should seek to demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit – “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Gal. 5:22, 23).
Mothers, too, have perhaps the most important role in all society. They have great influence in shaping the characters of their children and establishing the mood and temperament of the home. Fathers should do all they can to work with the mothers in the education of their children.
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