Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don has es­tab­lished a team to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly re­view the op­er­a­tions of Catholic care homes for chil­dren. The team will im­ple­ment new poli­cies and guide­lines that meet in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards for the man­age­ment of chil­dren's homes. This an­nounce­ment comes fol­low­ing re­ports of child abuse at sev­er­al chil­dren's homes in the coun­try. The Arch­bish­op com­mit­ted to en­list­ing the help of qual­i­fied, and con­cerned per­sons to relook at how Catholic res­i­den­tial homes for chil­dren are man­aged fol­low­ing the re­ports.

The fol­low­ing is a press from the Arch­dio­cese of Port of Spain: 

The Arch­bish­op of the Arch­dio­cese of Port of Spain has es­tab­lished a team to un­der­take a sys­temic re­view of Catholic Care Homes for chil­dren and to im­ple­ment new poli­cies and guide­lines that meet in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards for the man­age­ment of homes and the care for chil­dren.

The an­nounce­ment fol­lows the Arch­bish­op’s stat­ed com­mit­ment on June 6 to en­rol the sup­port of com­pe­tent, qual­i­fied, and con­cerned per­sons to relook at how Catholic res­i­den­tial homes for chil­dren are man­aged. The in­ter­ven­tion comes at a crit­i­cal time when there are mount­ing con­cerns about in­sti­tu­tion­al fail­ures in both re­li­gious and sec­u­lar homes in the safe­guard­ing of mi­nors.

The team’s man­date is fo­cused on the re­struc­tur­ing of homes in ac­cor­dance with best-in-class in­ter­na­tion­al guide­lines – in­clud­ing those pro­vid­ed by UNICEF. The team is ex­pect­ed to car­ry out a thor­ough and com­pre­hen­sive analy­sis of pri­ma­ry ser­vices, such as hu­man re­source com­pe­ten­cies, job func­tions, and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture, as well as op­er­a­tional and fi­nanc­ing de­fi­cien­cies.

It is ex­pect­ed that the analy­sis should pro­vide the most ap­pro­pri­ate way for­ward for mul­ti­fac­eted re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and suc­cess­ful so­cial rein­te­gra­tion of chil­dren en­ter­ing the Catholic care sys­tem. Rec­om­men­da­tions should be re­flec­tive of the spe­cif­ic leg­isla­tive and so­cioe­co­nom­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The team will be chaired by Mr Vin­cent Pereira, Chair­man, Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Lim­it­ed, Deputy Chair of Unit­ed Way TT and for­mer se­nior leader in the en­er­gy sec­tor. Al­so serv­ing on the team are Dr Karen Moore, Clin­i­cal Child Psy­chol­o­gist, with over 25 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in the ar­eas of child psy­chol­o­gy, spe­cial­is­ing in the ar­eas of child abuse and trau­ma, among oth­er ar­eas; Ms An­gela Hamel-Smith, an In­dus­tri­al Court Judge and for­mer­ly the Group Man­ag­er Hu­man Re­source with the Massy Group for over 20 years; and Ms Annabelle Sook­lal, an at­tor­ney-at-law with 29 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in civ­il mat­ters in­clud­ing fam­i­ly law, 15 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in ar­bi­tra­tion and con­sid­er­able ex­pe­ri­ence in the con­duct of pub­lic en­quiries.

Over time, the team will draw on the ex­per­tise and ex­pe­ri­ence of oth­er pro­fes­sion­als and re­sources which would ben­e­fit their work. In an­nounc­ing the team, Arch­bish­op Gor­don said that, “In spite of the many suc­cess sto­ries that have emerged from chil­dren’s homes, it is clear that the sys­tem has se­ri­ous de­fi­cien­cies which must be cor­rect­ed.

It is time for the Church to step up and move for­ward to rem­e­dy these short­com­ings, through a com­pre­hen­sive and sys­temic over­haul of our care in­sti­tu­tions for chil­dren. Every child is a gift from God and de­serves to live in safe­ty and with the lov­ing sup­port of re­spon­si­ble adults. I am grate­ful to this team for their gen­eros­i­ty in vol­un­teer­ing their time and ser­vice to this sig­nif­i­cant and im­por­tant un­der­tak­ing.”