Toward Effective Intervention for Haiti's Former Child Slaves
Because no systematic evidence existed on what happens to Haitian children after they leave domestic servitude, Kennedy and her collaborators ran two linked qualitative studies in August 2011, one in transitional care settings around Port-au-Prince, one in two Central Plateau communities where twenty-six children had been returned to their families. Fourteen local interviewers, trained on a Johns Hopkins protocol, used free listing and key informant methods, and asked participants to speak about children in general rather than about themselves. Adults listed economic hardship, risk and violence first; children listed sadness, unease and remembering bad moments. Informants explained aggressive behaviour as reproduction of what had been done to the child, and withdrawal as the return of memory. Children sent home were often unwanted, treated as a burden by parents unable to feed them or pay school fees. The recommendations run from ending the practice to validating a symptom instrument and funding schooling after reinsertion.
Kennedy, C. L. (2014). Toward Effective Intervention for Haiti's Former Child Slaves. Human Rights Quarterly, 36(4), 756-778.