CAMP Cornwall to be expanded next year
Published:Tuesday | December 25, 2018 | 12:00 AM
The Child Abuse Mitigation Project (CAMP) Cornwall, a hospital-based intervention at the Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) in Montego Bay, St James, geared at reducing the effects of violence on children and youth in the parish, will be expanded in the New Year.
Colleen Wint-Bond, project coordinator of the initiative, which is being administered through the Violence Prevention Alliance (VPA), said that the alliance was able to secure funding from international organisation Open Society Foundation to restart the initiative in 2019.
"The project will now not only focus on children presenting with violence-related injuries at the hospital, but will be expanded to include adults up to age 24 years who are more at risk of reprisals. This restart is positive, as we have another year to move this project forward," she disclosed at a recent VPA meeting at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus.
After registering with the Accident & Emergency Department and being medically examined, children are screened for levels of risk of violence or abuse. A small team of dedicated CAMP Cornwall social workers provide support through home and school visits. The social workers will now also work with the older cohort of patients.
Wint-Bond said the project will collaborate with the Mona GeoInformatics Institute by providing data from the hospital in order to map where incidents of violence occur. This, she said, will help inform services with psychosocial programmes in the community to address these social issues
"We are happy that the mapping will contribute to identifying areas that need the psychosocial interventions for the families and children, and how the police and other stakeholders can utilise the information in terms of providing support moving forward," she said.
In July 2017, with support from the Citizen Security and Justice Programme in the Ministry of National Security, the VPA organised and began implementation of CAMP Cornwall to reduce the effects of violence on children and youth in the parish.