Barrel children

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Barrel children are those left on their own by parents seeking a better life abroad.

Dr. Claudette Crawford-Brown, the University of the West Indies academic who first described the phenomenon of barrel-children, defines the concept "barrel-children" as those children who, while waiting in the Caribbean to migrate to their parents in the metropoles of North America and the United Kingdom, receive material resources in the form of food and clothing in lieu of direct care. Dr. Crawford-Brown in her seminal work Who will save our children: The plight of the Jamaican child in the nineties showed that these children have surrogate parents who are often unable to give them the emotional support and nurturance that the need, most of these children may be instead raised by grandparents or close relatives.

The impact on these children of this type of neglect includes a range of emotional and behavioural problems including run-away behaviour, withdrawal, depression, and, in some cases, acting-out behaviour.

[edit] Source

• Crawford-Brown, C. (1999). Who will save our children: The plight of the Jamaican child in the nineties. Kingston: University of the West Indies Canoe Press.