Camille Clarke

Chil­dren of sin­gle par­ents are six times more like­ly to be poor, says Ed­ward Clarke, dean of the School of Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean.

Clarke was speak­ing at the Pos­i­tive Youth De­vel­op­ment Project 2015 at the Sir George Al­leyne Build­ing, Warn­er Street in St Au­gus­tine, on Mon­day.

He said re­search had re­vealed that the im­pact of ab­sen­tee fa­thers was im­por­tant be­cause chil­dren who lived with on­ly one par­ent were six times like­ly to be poor than chil­dren who lived with both par­ents.

"In ad­di­tion, some re­searchers found that chil­dren suf­fered more emo­tion­al, be­hav­iour­al and in­tel­lec­tu­al prob­lems re­sult­ing in high­er risk of drop­ping out of school, and al­co­hol and drug abuse," he said.

Clarke said it was not­ed the ab­sence of fa­thers in fam­i­lies had tremen­dous con­se­quences.

He said 60 per cent of the women in­car­cer­at­ed at the Gold­en Grove Prison and 60 per cent of boys at the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre were sin­gle moth­ers and had ab­sen­tee fa­thers, re­spec­tive­ly.

He said the now de­funct Life­S­port pro­gramme was a suc­cess to the chil­dren who vis­it­ed the cen­tres.

Clarke said the find­ings at three cen­tres at La Hor­quet­ta, Ma­yaro and Mal­abar re­vealed that un­der the pro­gramme the boys ben­e­fit­ted but over 60 per cent had ab­sent fa­thers.

"This was im­por­tant, all dropped out of school and were in some gangs or just hang­ing out," he said.

Clarke said the boys learned to con­trol anger, im­prove life and were think­ing which de­ter­mined their life.

"It in­ter­nalised the is­sues. They came there with an at­ti­tude and they said it made them a bet­ter per­son, gave them cer­tain changes with life by re­spect­ing oth­ers," he said.

He said many of the boys went on to pur­sue em­ploy­ment, their ed­u­ca­tion, skills and train­ing.

Gre­go­ry Sloane-Seale, pro­gramme co-or­di­na­tor of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty's Cit­i­zen Se­cu­ri­ty Pro­gramme, said the youths were at risk.

"There are en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial and fam­i­ly con­di­tions that hin­der their per­son­al de­vel­op­ment in so­ci­ety and now there is a cy­ber so­ci­ety in our homes. Our chil­dren are at risk and we need to el­e­vate our con­scious­ness," he said.

Sloane-Seale said youth-friend­ly spaces need­ed to be cre­at­ed, youth work­ers need­ed to be avail­able, go the ex­tra mile, com­mu­ni­cate and make the youths feel spe­cial while be­ing hon­est.