accepted that society has a responsibility to care for its children when there
is no one else.

During the 1970s Jamaica weathered serious economic crises which were
followed by harsh structural adjustment programmes. The reality of the
Jamaican social welfare situation is that 39.8 percent of Jamaican children
under 14 years (approximately 316,968 children) are in extreme poverty. In
1994, this was manifested by the fact that approximately 23,000 children
between the ages of 6 and 16 years were classified as working children. Of
this number 2,500 could be considered to be children of the streets and
could be classified as homeless. In 1994, 81 children were classified as having
some form of disability, and 3,000 children were resident in private and
public children's homes ( UNICEF 1986).

The most recent Survey of Living Conditions ( Planning Institute of Jamaica
1995a) indicates that approximately 50 percent of the Jamaican population
is under 18 years and approximately a third of this number are under 15
years. It is interesting to note that during the period 1988-1993, there was a
7.5 percent increase in the under five population, which now represents
11.5 percent of the total population. This has implications for planning child
welfare policies and programmes, which must take these facts into account.

In 1994 the unemployment rate among males was 9.6 percent and among
females it was 21.8 percent, with the poorest 20 percent of the Jamaican
population accounting for 6.5 percent of national consumption. Although
the rates of unemployment in Jamaica fell from 27.6 percent in 1989 to 15.4
percent in 1994, the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) reports that the
quality of jobs deteriorated over the period. Though all poor households
record at least one person unemployed, the 1995 Survey of Living Conditions
confirms that many persons who are employed lack the required skills and
so are confined to low productivity, low paying jobs. When there is poverty
of this nature it is the children who are the most vulnerable group, in terms
of its effect on their general welfare ( Sabatini and Newman-Williams 1997).
In a discussion of the 1996 National Plan of Action for Children, one PIOJ

-2-