Latest update December 4th, 2024 2:40 AM
“I would go to the NOC….I’m willing to help” – Dr Faith Harding
By Latoya Giles
Former Presidential Candidate and Child Development Psychologist, Dr. Faith Harding, has stepped up to the mantle and is willing to offer her expertise to the New Opportunity Corps. Harding said, yesterday, that she is willing to go to the NOC and work with the children and adults at the institution.
“I’m always willing to go and help young people throughout Guyana,” Harding told Kaieteur News. She said that it was unfortunate for Minister Dr. Frank Anthony to say that the NOC is unable to attract persons to work there.
Dr. Faith Harding
“The ministry could find the money, and it’s no secret that I’m qualified likewise so many others in Guyana but no one from the Ministry has ever come forward and asked me,” Harding said.
Harding added that it’s no secret that the institution needs a total revamp. She told Kaieteur News that it’s unfortunate that the government has institutions set up, but these aren’t properly set up to deal with issues.
She said that the NOC should have several counsellors or people who can do psycho therapy. It should also have a visiting Psychiatrist. Harding explained that the institution deals with delinquency and other crimes that have to do with conduct disorder.
She said that these children are put in this institution that is not equipped to handle the psychology problems that they may be facing.
She noted that it’s rather unfortunate that government, after seeing a rise in crime in teenagers and this “gangster mentality” did not see it necessary to have a whole department of psychology to deal with the illness children are dealing with.
“In that institution the children are already incarcerated. In a sense, it’s a detention facility,” Harding noted.
She said that in her mind it hasn’t grown from where it was in the early days. “I haven’t been there in a few years but it was created as a disciplinary institution coming out of the military arm of the society,” Harding noted.
She said that the institution needs to be taken from another level, a level where it implements psychological training. She said that the people at the NOC need to be trained in psychology. “Not every child will turn to crime, but we need people there who understand them,” Harding told Kaieteur News.
“People there don’t understand how their brains are thinking and I don’t know if the adults who are there are still coming out from the disciplined forces or from a social work background,” Harding said.
Even the social workers aren’t fully learned in the area. She said that they aren’t trained in therapy and they rarely know any therapy that would be applicable at the NOC.
Two weeks ago a High Court Judge granted the Child Protection Agency (CPA) a court order to have four teenage girls removed from the New Opportunity Corps (NOC).
Head of the CPA, Ann Greene, had told Kaieteur News that the Agency had moved to the courts to have the girls removed as to continue the investigation into allegations of abuse.
Greene said that the girls will remain in protective custody. She noted that the Child Protection Agency is obligated to investigate every single report of abuse against a child.
Last week Culture Minister Dr. Frank Anthony had come out after almost three weeks of media reports about several irregularities at the NOC to say that he was “saddened” by the allegations.
Anthony was also asked why the findings of the 2012 Commission of Inquiry are almost two years behind schedule. He acknowledged that the final report was to have been submitted since September 2012.
He said that the ministry has written to the Commission’s Chairman, Justice Winston Moore over a period of time asking for the report to be submitted. He said that Moore has not been paid for the work as yet, since the agreement was, “after completion and handover” he would receive a “stipend”.
Further, the Minister said that the board as far as he is aware produced a preliminary report.
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