Gov’t to take ‘holistic approach’ to homelessness, Senator Marshall says

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Senator Samantha Marshall and MP Melford Nicholas (Photos by Observer’s Samantha Simon)
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By Robert A. Emmanuel

[email protected]

Throughout Antigua and Barbuda, it has become the norm to see someone sleeping on a cardboard box as homelessness continues to be an issue, especially in the city of St John’s.

In the wake of Monday’s Throne Speech, Observer media broached the subject with the Senator and Minister of State with responsibility for Social Transformation, Samantha Marshall, who shared some of the government’s plans to address the issue.

“We are looking at the current [mental health] legislation to see how it can be adjusted to ensure that we are able to provide that level of mental health care and any other care.

“We are also looking at a site to retrofit a facility … to ensure we develop a holistic programme where we are not only allowing them somewhere they can securely sleep, but we are also looking at programmes that go along with that,” Marshall said.

She explained that measures such as the provision of meals and health care services, as well as a job programme, to assist homeless people to become productive members of society are also being considered.

“So, we don’t want to say that you live there for free of charge, but you must earn, and it is not that we want to take the money, but we must ensure that the person eventually is structured so they can return into society,” Senator Marshall expounded.

Mental health has been a pervasive issue in the country as the current legislation remains of an archaic design, with several advocates calling for a reform of the law for years.

One such advocate, Chaneil Imhoff, spoke out against the antiquated mental health policies on Sunday.

In a press release, Imhoff made reference to a recent incident involving a mental health patient who was taken to the Sir Lester Bird Medical Centre but fled, requiring her family to undertake a huge effort to relocate her.

She said that the country was “facing an unprecedented mental health crisis among people of all ages [as] stigma, discrimination and human rights violations against people with mental health conditions are widespread in communities and care systems everywhere”.

Senator Marshall acknowledged this in her conversation with Observer.

“A lot of the issues with our vagrants stem from, one way or the other, their mental health condition … our mental health legislation is somewhat draconian and so we need to look at something much more modern and appeasing to assist not only our vagrants, but there are different aspects of mental health conditions that arise within Antigua and Barbuda and we need to pay a little more focus through the legislative agenda,” Marshall indicated.

The state of the country’s lone psychiatric hospital Clarevue has also been largely overlooked as staff, advocates and international observers have derided government’s lack of investment in the deteriorating facility.

During last week’s post-Cabinet press briefing, Information Minister Melford Nicholas alluded to the link between mental health and homelessness and revealed that the Ministry of Social Transformation was in talks to obtain premises in the Kentish Road area to accommodate homeless people.

“This is a matter that has been put back on the front burner and, of course, there are other social partners involved in supporting these [homeless] persons,” he said, adding, “some persons, it is not that they do not have a home, for whatever reason, they just into this nomadic arrangement and get on the streets and we are going to have to try to understand that.”

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