7 News Belize

Making Sense of MICS
posted (June 20, 2017)
Back in November of last year, we told you about results of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, or MICS.

Its a collaboration between the Statistical Institute of Belize and UNICEF, which aims to collect and analyze data about Belizean citizens in order to better inform policy making. It's done every 5 years, and it seeks to study the wellbeing of the country's women and children.

So, the policy makers have had just over 6 months to digest the results, and today, UNICEF reached out to the entire press to discuss what they view as the most important parts of the survery. One of the experts discussed a few of the areas of concern that the survey exposes for children between the ages of 3 and 4.

Here's how she explained it:

Paulette Wade - Monitor/Evaluation Specialist, UNICEF
"What most stand out is the physical punishment and psychological aggression that children experience in the home. What was key and came out for us was that children between the ages of 3 and 4 have been very violently abused. In the terms of mixed language while we are talking about violently abused, we are talking about hitting on the head, slapping really hard, beating over and over again with all your might. We know that children who are in those situations perpetrate violence. If there is violence in the home, there will be violence in the street and I think that as we approach the situation of looking at violence in our streets we need to start first of all of address the violence that are in the home. Children who experience violence but as well as children who are in homes of domestic abuse,"

"I know that first of all the ministry of education has banned corporal punishment in the schools so that's number one, but in terms of parenting, UNICEF has undertaken an end violence campaign in which we have put PCAs on the media, we have had various communication and dialogue with parents to try to understand what's the reason for this abuse, because you see sometimes when you look at the data the intervention needs a little bit more unpacking. You see the data and what I'm showing is at national level. We need to understand whether or not it's more kids that is in Toledo that is being hit that's skewing the national data and when you identify where you have to unpack the data a little bit more. Why are parents hitting their children, it's because my neighbor hits the child and I feel that I must hit my child in order to fit in or it's because of my religious belief that I'm hitting my child, because each one of those mind set takes a different approach to change a behavior."

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