BAEH president denies any hand in children being taken from woman; calls for assistance to help homeless 24-7

The President of the Barbados Alliance to End Homelessness (BAEH) Kemar Saffrey claims he has been the target of threats and criticism and has even come close to being assaulted following the Child Care Board’s (CCB) decision to take two toddlers from their homeless mother.

And as he sought to set the record straight about his involvement in the matter, he said the developments had highlighted the urgent need for his organisation’s shelter to be open all day and night.

He said while the BAEH was in talks with the relevant state-owned agencies on the issue, it needed assistance to fast-track the shelter offering service on a 24-hour basis.

Saffrey’s comments came after the CCB took the one-year-old and three-year-old children of 29-year-old Danae Gibbons, who spent the past six nights at the Spry Street shelter but was on the streets during the day.

“If we linger any longer, then we will have more cases like hers coming to us and seen on the streets,” Saffrey cautioned.

“The shelter needs to turn into a 24-hour shelter. The shelter is not open 24 hours because we don’t have the finances to be able to hire the staff that we need for the day to be able to assist these people.

“People have to appreciate that we can only do so much. People got this notion that we could do everything, but we can’t; we could only do some, and somebody else got to do the rest. The general public needs to understand that the Barbados Alliance to End Homelessness can only do so much,” he added.

Saffrey defended his organisation and denied that the young mother had not been treated properly by BAEH, or that he had called in the CCB.

Saffrey suggested that a video posted on social media showing Gibbons and her two children sitting on pieces of cardboard by the Treasury Building was the reason the toddlers were taken by the CCB officers who spoke with Gibbons at the shelter.

In that video posted by Adrian Bascombe, who said he represented the Democratic Labour Party (DLP), the mother of three spoke about her plight and the conditions she was allegedly being forced to endure while staying at the shelter.

She said that according to the shelter’s rules, she had to leave the facility around 6 a.m. and could only return to sleep at night.

A frustrated Saffrey told Barbados TODAY: “I am tired of people trying to exploit me and exploit my name and my organisation. I was even attacked yesterday [Tuesday] because of that video. A man came to the shelter on Monday, pulled scissors on me, and said that I should be dead because I left the woman on the streets with the children.

“And then yesterday, again, the man came out, pulled big rocks on me and tried to lick me down in the middle of the road. My staff and I wear branded shirts, so when you see me or my staff on the streets, what is going to happen? When you go out on the streets, and people tell you ‘you is a wicked this or a wicked that’…that is not right,” he added.

Saffrey, who insisted that Gibbons was exploited in the video which has since been taken off Bascombe’s social media, said he could not understand why she had criticised the shelter.

He said his staff sought to look after the well-being of the mother and her children from the time she turned up last Thursday seeking help.

As it relates to people being asked to leave the shelter during the day, Saffrey said adjustments were made to accommodate the mother because she had the two young children with her.

“The lady came to the shelter Thursday, August 24; she would have been assisted by the organisation that night. She slept the entire day on Friday and we provided her with clothes and counselling, and a psychologist came and saw her. We provided her with baby formula, and we gave her the whole nine yards.

“On Saturday, she left at 7 a.m. because that is what time the shelter closes. The Saturday she said she had somewhere to go, she was going by her friend, and we said ‘fine, go by your friend’. She returned in the afternoon. We normally open all day Sunday but, unfortunately, this Sunday the building was scheduled to be sprayed, and she could not stay. So she went to Heroes Square where she was met by [Bascombe] who stated in the video that he was there to help. The video did not do the young lady any justice because it sought to exploit her and a number of other homeless persons that were also out there,” Saffrey asserted.

He said Gibbons was then “sought after by the CCB”.

“The CCB would have then met her at our office, and she was assessed by the Child Care Board officers who made every attempt to contact relatives to ask who would take the children. Nobody that they contacted could have assisted her at the time,” he explained.

Saffrey said several persons have contacted the BAEH offering to give Gibbons a job and accommodation so she could get her children back.

Meanwhile, Bascombe posted another video on Wednesday in which he apologised for casting Saffrey and others in a bad light and for any role his video played in Gibbons’ children being taken away.

“I just want to say that my intentions, as always, were clear and not for no other reason but to do good and to assist others in getting their voices heard. With that being said, I want to apologise publicly to the young lady for what that may have caused or would have caused her to be going through now at this present moment,” he said.

“And secondly, my apologies to Mr Kemar Saffrey if I may have offended him or other persons; my humblest apologies. And to anyone else in that video that felt some kind of pressure of offence, that was not my intention.”

General Secretary of the DLP Steve Blackett issued a notice on Wednesday indicating that Bascombe is not or never has been a spokesperson for the party and was not given any permission to represent the party “on any matter, at any time”.

anestahenry@barbadostoday.bb