Chester Sam­bra­no

Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Stu­art Young, has said staff who have been iden­ti­fied as cul­prits in the abuse of chil­dren at chil­dren’s homes and care cen­tres have been re­moved from those in­sti­tu­tions.

He added that the chil­dren have al­so been “ex­tract­ed” from these homes for their safe­ty.

The mat­ter was raised dur­ing a meet­ing of the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee (SFC) of Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

“On the re­ceipt of any re­port, not on­ly the Jus­tice Ju­dith Jones re­port, the child be­ing in a po­si­tion where he or she may be in dan­ger, im­me­di­ate­ly the re­spon­si­ble peo­ple in the (Chil­dren’s) Au­thor­i­ty will move in and deal with that sit­u­a­tion and ex­tract the child,” Young said.

“So to try and cre­ate a nar­ra­tive or paint a pic­ture, or even a sug­ges­tion that these chil­dren are be­ing left there in harm’s way is sim­ply not so.”

When Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath sought to find out just how many chil­dren were re­moved from the trou­bled homes, his ques­tion was de­nied by the chair­man of the com­mit­tee, Bridgid An­nisette-George, on the grounds that it did not qual­i­fy as part of the work of the SFC.

Mo­ments ear­li­er, Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy was asked by Padarath whether al­ter­nate arrange­ments would be made at oth­er fa­cil­i­ties for the chil­dren who are housed at the homes iden­ti­fied as abu­sive.

How­ev­er, the min­is­ter said the phi­los­o­phy of the Gov­ern­ment point­ed in a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion.

The St Jude’s Home for Girls.

“The phi­los­o­phy of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty and the phi­los­o­phy of this Gov­ern­ment is not to put chil­dren in in­sti­tu­tions, so one of the things we are try­ing to im­prove is our kin­ship care, that is iden­ti­fy­ing suit­able fam­i­lies, im­prov­ing the fos­ter care sys­tem, as well as adop­tion,” she said.

The Jus­tice Ju­dith Jones re­port on state-run and state-as­sist­ed chil­dren’s homes and care cen­tres sent shock waves through­out the pop­u­la­tion, as it re­vealed nu­mer­ous cas­es of mal­treat­ment at sev­er­al in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing phys­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal and sex­u­al abuse, gang rape and pros­ti­tu­tion.

The 307-page re­port, ti­tled Safe­guard­ing Chil­dren in Com­mu­ni­ty Res­i­dences and Child Sup­port Cen­tres in Trinidad and To­ba­go, was laid in Par­lia­ment on April 29, 2022.

Fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery, there were calls for firm ac­tion to be tak­en to pro­tect the chil­dren at these homes.

On­ly Thurs­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said that there was no im­me­di­ate plan to cut fund­ing or close down any non-com­pli­ant chil­dren’s homes, even in light of the re­port. In­stead, he said the Gov­ern­ment is act­ing on the rec­om­men­da­tions of the com­mit­tee.

“But we have not let the is­sue fall through the cracks,” he added.

Cur­rent­ly, there are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 580 chil­dren in chil­dren’s homes across the coun­try.

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