Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chil­dren in To­ba­go who need care and pro­tec­tion will now re­ceive faster med­ical and so­cial ser­vices un­der a new agree­ment be­tween the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), and the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty.

An MoU (Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing) signed on Fri­day, at the Di­vi­sion of Health Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion of­fice in Scar­bor­ough, re­moves bu­reau­crat­ic de­lays by al­low­ing Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of­fi­cers to di­rect­ly re­fer chil­dren for med­ical ser­vices with­in the TRHA, elim­i­nat­ing the need for re­peat­ed as­sess­ments and long wait­ing pe­ri­ods.

Ac­cord­ing to Health Sec­re­tary Dr Faith Breb­nor this stream­lined process en­sures that vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren re­ceive time­ly care with­out un­nec­es­sary stress.

She said, “We need­ed to pay spe­cial at­ten­tion to how we man­age chil­dren in need of care and pro­tec­tion on the is­land, and we need­ed to do it with pur­pose and en­sure we all un­der­stood our in­di­vid­ual re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.”

She said the col­lab­o­ra­tion rep­re­sents a shift “from frag­ment­ed ser­vices to a uni­fied ap­proach,” where agen­cies no longer pass off re­spon­si­bil­i­ty but work to­geth­er to safe­guard To­ba­go’s chil­dren.

Ac­cord­ing to Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty chair­man Shel­don Cyrus, this agree­ment marks a mile­stone in child pro­tec­tion ef­forts in To­ba­go as it en­sures that chil­dren in cri­sis re­ceive the sup­port they need with­out un­nec­es­sary ob­sta­cles.

He said the agree­ment, built on the Na­tion­al In­ter­a­gency Pro­to­col for Child Abuse Pre­ven­tion and Man­age­ment, brings to­geth­er 40-50 agen­cies to clar­i­fy roles and pre­vent du­pli­ca­tion of ef­forts. 

Since 2018, the au­thor­i­ty has worked to es­tab­lish this frame­work, which Cyrus said en­sures a co­or­di­nat­ed ap­proach to safe­guard­ing chil­dren. He cred­it­ed the Sec­re­tary of Health and oth­er stake­hold­ers for mak­ing the MoU, the first of its kind, a re­al­i­ty.

He said, “Even though we are an agency of the state, we put a lot of care in­to what we do. Sweat, tears go in­to what we do be­cause we ap­pre­ci­ate the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of every­thing that goes in­to all our op­er­a­tions.

“The con­se­quence of not get­ting it right is too great be­cause it’s the life of a child.”