Social intervention programmes bearing fruit, says labour ministry director
Published:Saturday | June 25, 2022 | 12:06 AMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
AUDREY DEER-WILLIAMS, the chief technical director in the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, is dismissing recent suggestions by National Security Minister Dr Horace Chang that social-intervention programmes have failed to produce any meaningful results in curbing crime.
“Certainly, there can be improvement, but we in our ministry have evidence of how our programmes have helped persons, including persons from the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH),” Deer-Williams, who has responsibility for the ministry’s Social Security Division, told The Gleaner on Wednesday.
She was speaking immediately following the launch of the Ministry of Labour’s PATH community engagement series, held at the St John’s Methodist Church in Montego Bay, St James.
The PATH programme, which began in 2002, focuses on social welfare provision as opposed to crime prevention, with the specific goal of helping children from poor families to attend school and stay healthy.
BILLIONS SPENT
Last Friday, Chang declared that Jamaica’s crime rate could be much lower than it currently is, if half of the $387 billion spent on social intervention programmes targeting crime and violence between 2007 and 2018 had instead been spent on upgrading the police force.
“We keep saying ‘put more money there’, but we cannot put money the same way because we got very little out of it,” Chang said at the time in reference to crime-specific social-intervention programmes.
Deer-Williams insisted that there have been several success stories out of both the PATH initiative and the labour ministry’s targeted social-intervention strategies.
“I do not know that we would agree that there is no fruit, as we have Rhodes Scholars who have been PATH beneficiaries and other persons who have gone on to live very successful lives. There needs to be change, but it does not mean that we don’t do what we are doing, because we know that it has had a positive impact,” said Deer-Williams.
“At the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, we have a number of programmes geared at changing people’s lives, and we are going to be using all our efforts and ensuring that we bring these interventions to the persons who need it. We believe that through that process, we will change persons’ outlook and perspective and get them engaged in jobs, and ultimately, if you are gainfully employed, you won’t be engaged in violence,” Deer-Williams added.
The PATH Community Engagement Series is seeking to target 239 communities across Jamaica over a six-month period in order to identify the various needs of the residents who will be impacted and to collect data in order to refine the ministry’s service offerings.
St James Central Member of Parliament Heroy Clarke, who attended Wednesday’s launch, called for greater collaboration between social intervention advocates and the political directorate in order to make initiatives such as PATH a success.
“We have most of the more informal settlements in this constituency, and this is really where our PATH programme is needed. What I want is for us to involve the political directorate more so, because so often, as early as this morning, if you passed my gate, you would have seen between 10 and 20 people wanting assistance,” said Clarke.
“I want to say to you how appreciative we are of the work you are doing because we understand very well what it is aimed at doing. But let us work together as one unit so that we don’t go over each other … . Get the political directorate involved,” Clarke urged the labour ministry representatives.