Barrel children

Barrel children are children who are abandoned or "left behind" by their parents who are seeking a better life abroad.

Dr. Claudette Crawford-Brown, the University of the West Indies academic who first described the phenomenon of barrel children, defines "barrel children" as those children who, while waiting in the Caribbean to migrate to their parents in the metropoles of North America and the United Kingdom, receive material resources in the form of food and clothing in lieu of direct care. Dr. Crawford-Brown, in her publication Who will save our children: The plight of the Jamaican child in the nineties, showed that these children have surrogate parents who are often unable to give them the emotional support and nurturance that they need, most of these children may be instead raised by grandparents or close relatives.