The long overdue bill to establish a Childcare and Protection Agency was passed in the National Assembly on Thursday last. Piloted late last year by Minister of Human Services and Social Security Priya Manickchand, who has developed the reputation of being a ‘get-it-done’ minister, the agency, which does not as yet exist, will broadly oversee all childcare facilities, monitor homes, including foster homes and orphanages and will set out policy with regard to adoption, custody, guardianship and maintenance of children. It will also provide basic services for vulnerable children, including those infected with or affected by HIV and those with physical and mental disabilities.
The functions and responsibilities of the agency will be wide-ranging: providing and maintaining childcare centres and other facilities for children in need of care and protection with due regard to prescribed standards and requirements. (It will also be responsible for licensing and registering private facilities and ensuring their compliance with standards and regulations.) It will also place children in foster homes and/or orphanages; supervise foster children and their parents and promote prescribed standards and requirements for children in facilities to ensure their best development.
The agency will also be charged with promoting good parenting education, parental responsibility and practices and will assess applications for foster care, guardianship and adoption and make recommendations and provide assistance to courts and other authorities involved in determining such applications. In cases where the actions or conduct of a person have resulted in or are likely to give rise to abuse of a child, the agency will intervene.
It is also to investigate allegations or complaints of abuse or neglect and to provide services for the recovery and rehabilitation of children who have suffered abuse. Further, it will coordinate and monitor the activities of other persons, including non-governmental organisations engaged in the management of cases of child abuse and neglect and take action against any private person or organisation to ensure the safety and well-being of children.
The agency will also be responsible for promoting the rights of the child, liaise with regional and international organisations in matters relating to the welfare of children and make proposals and recommendations on the enactment and improvement of laws in this vein.
These are by no means all of the services the new agency will offer. The act lists a host of others, but by any standards, the tasks listed above are already a tall order. The agency will of course fall under the Human Services Ministry, which is currently seriously challenged in terms of human, financial and other resources. This ministry operates out of a set of cramped buildings in the vicinity of the Stabroek Market, Parliament and minibus parks, but given the sensitive nature of the services it offers, it has always been incorrectly placed.
The ministry is solely responsible for all of the government welfare programmes and these include old age pensions, public assistance, the probation department and the adoption board. Its officers and social workers, apart from attending to people with regard to these services, also counsel wayward and abused children and their parents and investigate reports and allegations of child endangerment, among other things. While some of these services have been decentralized, the majority are only available at the ministry, which until recently was also part of the Ministry of Labour.
The Ministry of Human Services and Social Security is, arguably, the government agency that sees the highest volume of human traffic on a daily basis. Calls made previously in this column for its removal to more comfortable and conducive quarters have been ignored. However, with the setting up of the Childcare and Protection Agency, this will need to be addressed. No doubt, some thought would have already been given to this. Hopefully, thought would also have been given to ensuring that the ministry and its new agency have the necessary technological and other equipment that will be needed to ensure that quality service is provided.
As the act awaits the President’s assent, which one hopes would not be long in coming given that this legislation has received wide parliamentary support and is among the least controversial and most highly anticipated laws to date, there ought to be moves to identify at least the building which will house the new agency. It bears repeating that the entire ministry should be moved from its current location.
However, with the impending addition to its mandate, there may not be a building readily available, from which it can comfortably operate.
Further, the new Childcare and Protection Agency will need to be staffed. Again, the nature of the services it will offer calls for careful selection of those who will physically provide these services. Child-friendly, should be the highest qualification necessary and there should be screening of applicants to weed out paedophiles and persons with violent tendencies.
As with all other laws, it is not the coming into being of the Childcare and Protection Agency Act that will safeguard our children. Rather, it is its enforcement and the constant monitoring that will do the trick.
