KALI­FA SARAH CLYNE

The Child Pro­tec­tion Task Force sub­mit­ted its first re­port to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Christ­mas Eve.Chair­man of the Task Force Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att said the re­port, which fo­cused on the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty, need­ed to be dis­cussed at Cab­i­net lev­el be­fore any­thing fur­ther could be done.Asked if the re­port con­tained on­ly rec­om­men­da­tions, Ma­habir-Wy­att said it con­tained rec­om­men­da­tions for cer­tain ac­tions to be tak­en.

"Hope­ful­ly, by the end of Jan­u­ary we will be able to get what­ev­er per­mis­sions and ap­provals for what needs to be done," she said.She said staffing of the Au­thor­i­ty is still one of the main is­sues, but this could not be done with­out Cab­i­net ap­provals.Ma­habir-Wy­att ex­pects the re­port to be dis­cussed by Cab­i­net dur­ing its first meet­ing for the new year.

The task force was cre­at­ed ear­ly this month on the heels of an in­crease in in­ci­dents of vi­o­lence against chil­dren and in re­sponse to the bru­tal death of six-year-old Keyana Cum­ber­batch, who was found in a bar­rel in her apart­ment af­ter be­ing killed and sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed.The sus­pect in Keyana's mur­der is cur­rent­ly at the St Ann's Med­ical Cen­tre un­der­go­ing a psy­chi­atric as­sess­ment.

"This task force was put to­geth­er for the pur­pose of tak­ing ac­tion not just rec­om­men­da­tions and we are hop­ing that it will not take an­oth­er six months to get done.""We are still op­ti­mistic that by the end of Jan­u­ary we will have ac­tu­al pos­i­tive re­sults.""We will have ac­tion on our rec­om­men­da­tions," Ma­habir-Wy­att said.The task force, which was of­fi­cial­ly es­tab­lished on De­cem­ber 5, is still do­ing back­ground work be­fore mov­ing for­ward with oth­er re­ports.

One of the biggest prob­lems the task force is fac­ing, is a lack of sta­tis­tics on chil­dren and child abuse.The lack of sta­tis­tics is an is­sue that has been re­peat­ed across var­i­ous sec­tors in this coun­try."Every or­gan­i­sa­tion keeps its own sta­tis­tics and we have one group work­ing specif­i­cal­ly on gath­er­ing all this in­for­ma­tion and an­oth­er group work­ing on what is need­ed to co­or­di­nate the dif­fer­ent leg­is­la­tion that af­fects chil­dren."The task force is al­so look­ing at es­tab­lish­ing stan­dards for chil­drens homes in this coun­try.

Ma­habir-Wy­att said the more than 50 chil­dren homes in this coun­try had no con­sis­tent stan­dards and ranged from li­censed homes where chil­dren were well tak­en care of, to places where chil­dren were tak­en from abu­sive sit­u­a­tions, on­ly to be placed in those same sit­u­a­tions in chil­dren's homes.Ear­li­er this month, a let­ter was sent from the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty to the Min­istry of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment re­gard­ing re­ports of sex­u­al abuse at a chil­dren's home in East Trinidad.