RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Three boys who went miss­ing from a Chil­dren’s Home last week, have been safe­ly re­turned and are now un­der the care of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Shel­don Cyrus, Di­rec­tor and CEO of the Au­thor­i­ty, high­light­ed that their safe re­cov­ery reaf­firms the Au­thor­i­ty’s com­mit­ment to its core prin­ci­ple:

“Child pro­tec­tion is every­body’s busi­ness.”

Cyrus ex­pressed his grat­i­tude to the pub­lic for their as­sis­tance, sin­gling out ac­tivist Kezel Jack­son for her crit­i­cal role in re­turn­ing two of the boys to the po­lice on Mon­day.

The third child was lo­cat­ed on Tues­day by the Au­thor­i­ty’s team.

As part of the Au­thor­i­ty’s pro­to­col, the chil­dren will un­der­go med­ical and psy­cho-so­cial as­sess­ments to ad­dress any trau­ma they may have ex­pe­ri­enced dur­ing their time away.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, an in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been launched to de­ter­mine how the boys man­aged to leave the fa­cil­i­ty. This in­quiry will not on­ly ex­plore the cir­cum­stances of their de­par­ture but al­so re­view the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols in place at the Home and ad­dress any al­le­ga­tions made by the chil­dren.

The Au­thor­i­ty al­so is ad­dress­ing al­le­ga­tions made by Jack­son dur­ing a so­cial me­dia news con­fer­ence re­gard­ing the care pro­vid­ed to the boys.

Cyrus em­pha­sized that these con­cerns are be­ing tak­en se­ri­ous­ly and will be in­clud­ed in the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion. He al­so stressed the im­por­tance of re­spect­ing the pri­va­cy and rights of the chil­dren, not­ing that as wards of the Court, they are en­ti­tled to pro­tec­tion from un­due pub­lic scruti­ny.

The Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty boss cau­tioned against any ac­tions that might im­pugn the char­ac­ter and in­tegri­ty of the pro­fes­sion­als work­ing with­in the child pro­tec­tion sys­tem.  He re­mind­ed the pub­lic that Jack­son, while well-in­ten­tioned, is not a le­gal guardian and does not have a right to un­fet­tered ac­cess to the chil­dren.

The Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty al­so re­mind­ed the pub­lic that its Hot­line, 996, is avail­able 24/7 for re­port­ing any cas­es of chil­dren in need of care and pro­tec­tion. In ur­gent sit­u­a­tions, the pub­lic al­so is en­cour­aged to con­tact the po­lice at 999.

Cyrus urged pa­tience when us­ing the Hot­line, ex­plain­ing that in times of high call vol­ume, a Call-back fea­ture is avail­able af­ter a brief wait. He re­as­sured the pub­lic that the Hot­line re­mains a con­fi­den­tial and se­cure method for re­port­ing, with all con­tact in­for­ma­tion kept pri­vate.

The Au­thor­i­ty says it is cur­rent­ly in the process of re­view­ing the Hot­line sys­tem to iden­ti­fy ar­eas for im­prove­ment and en­sure that the pub­lic is bet­ter served in the fu­ture.