Akash Sama­roo

The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter (OPM) is giv­ing se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to cre­at­ing this coun­try’s first ever Chil­dren’s Com­mis­sion­er.

This was a ma­jor rec­om­men­da­tion of the 2021 Ju­dith Jones Task Force re­port in­to abuse at chil­dren’s homes.

Speak­ing at a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) of Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Act­ing Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the OPM’s Gen­der and Child Af­fairs Di­vi­sion, Vi­jay Gan­gaper­sad, said, “The Task Force would have rec­om­mend­ed that we do some more re­view and analy­sis of that be­fore we move for­ward, giv­en the fact that we are go­ing to sub­stan­tial­ly change the land­scape of so­cial pro­tec­tion for chil­dren. So, it’s a mat­ter we’re cur­rent­ly en­gaged in, there’s a pol­i­cy that was draft­ed and we are cur­rent­ly re­view­ing that pol­i­cy, so in due course we would be able to put for­ward a po­si­tion as it re­lates to how things are go­ing to change and things are go­ing to en­hance.”

The JSC was held five days short of the one-year an­niver­sary since the re­port was hand­ed over to the State, and the mem­bers were tasked with get­ting an up­date on the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the rec­om­men­da­tions made in the 307-page re­port.

The Jus­tice Jones-led team, on page 134 of its re­port, stat­ed, “The Com­mis­sion­er shall have over­sight over the op­er­a­tions of the Au­thor­i­ty (Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go) to en­sure that it acts with­in its statu­to­ry re­mit.”

It al­so ad­vised that the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for li­cens­ing of homes be tak­en away from the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty and placed with the Chil­dren’s Com­mis­sion­er. In the re­port, Jones’ team ex­plained that the CATT was fail­ing to ful­fil this man­date and tak­ing this re­spon­si­bil­i­ty from them will al­low the Au­thor­i­ty to fo­cus on mon­i­tor­ing the homes.

The CATT’s mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem was deemed in­ad­e­quate by the in­ves­tiga­tive team in the re­port yes­ter­day, the au­thor­i­ty was asked by JSC chair­man Muham­mad Yunus Ibrahim to ex­plain how it has im­proved since.

“We have moved from mon­i­tor­ing from once a month to twice a month,” said Deputy Di­rec­tor Eliz­a­beth Lewis.

The re­port had, how­ev­er, rec­om­mend­ed in­de­pen­dent mon­i­tors and that was raised by the JSC.

“With re­spect to in­de­pen­dent in­spec­tors, they have not been ap­point­ed as yet,” ex­plained CATT Di­rec­tor Sharon Mor­ris-Cum­mings.

One of the most talked about homes in the re­port was the Mar­garet Kistow Chil­dren’s Home in Ari­ma. Dis­turb­ing al­le­ga­tions of un­ortho­dox and sus­pi­cious prac­tices were high­light­ed by the Jones team, with a rec­om­men­da­tion that it be closed down im­me­di­ate­ly.

Chair­man Ibrahim asked the CATT how that in­sti­tu­tion was not on its radar.

“Why was it a find­ing of the Task Force as op­posed to the mon­i­tor­ing of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty?”

The CATT Di­rec­tor said she could not an­swer that, as the home is cur­rent­ly ap­peal­ing the al­le­ga­tions and speak­ing about it now would be against the ap­pel­late process.

Mean­while, Mor­ris-Cum­mings sought to give the JSC the as­sur­ance that with re­spect to un­li­censed homes, a one-off grant has been ap­proved to help those homes get up to code. Cur­rent­ly, she said there are 276 chil­dren at these homes. She said most of those in­sti­tu­tions are around 70 per cent com­pli­ant and they are mind­ful that there is a March 2023 dead­line to be­come com­pli­ant.

And Gan­gaper­sad added that a re­view of the leg­is­la­tion with re­spect to res­i­den­tial care is un­der­way and will be fur­ther dis­cussed in Jan­u­ary 2023.