The Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA) is reporting a six per cent decrease in child abuse reports for last year.

This was disclosed by Lesia Bhagwandat-Vassell, deputy registrar of CPSFA’s National Children’s Registry, in an interview with Our Today.

“For last year, we would have received 14,130 preliminary child abuse reports in comparison to 15,068 recorded the year before. So, there is a six per cent decrease that we would have seen for last year,” she noted.

Bhagwandat-Vassell noted that while the CPFSA has not yet assessed the reason for this decrease, she noted that the agency continues to work with parents and other stakeholders to sensitise them on the various avenues for support to deal with child abuse.

“At the moment we cannot pinpoint anything for this decline, however, based on some of our interventions, we continue to work with our parents, through parenting sessions and training in order to help to build their capacity to manage various issues as well as we continue to work with our stakeholders, especially our prescribed persons in building their capacity as well to identify child abuse and also to report by whatever means whether to our 2-1-1 or through email or reaching out to our parish offices,” she explained.

The CPFSA official noted that Kingston and St Andrew, St James, and St Ann are typical for high child-abuse reports.

“While we have not finalised the figures as to the number for each parish, we know that the parishes of concern that these reports are coming from are Kingston and St Andrew as a twin parish together, we know that St Ann, St Catherine, and St James are a concern to us when it comes to a high volume of reports coming to the National Children’s Registry. But on the flip side, we are also concerned about some other parishes where we see some low volume of reports such as Portland, St Thomas, and Hanover,” she explained.

Among the categories of child abuse reported to the CPFSA are: sexual, physical, neglect, emotional abuse, child trafficking, and children in need of protection.

“We have also started to record reports of bullying, but what was of concern to me when I was doing the statistics was children who are exhibiting behaviour problems are the males having a higher figure than females at the beginning of the year, but the reports coming in for the females are higher throughout the year. We saw an 8 per cent increase in the number of reports coming in for children exhibiting behavioural issues,”

Bhagwandat-Vassell

For the parishes with low reports, Bhagwandat-Vassell said the CPFSA continues to work with citizens, stakeholders, and prescribed persons such as teachers to spread awareness around the issue of child abuse and the avenues to report child abuse.

The deputy registrar is urging Jamaicans to do more to stem abuse against children.

“We have to go back to the place of the village raising the child where everybody is concerned about child protection issues, where everybody is looking out for the child gone were the days when you see a child on the street at a particular time, that persons will be so interested. We need to go back to the days when everybody is looking out for the welfare of each child, irrespective of whether the child belongs to you,” she said.

Individuals seeking to make reports of child abuse can contact the CPFSA 24-hour 211 hotline.