SHORTCHANGING OUR CHILDREN
Understaffed OCA struggling to fulfil its mandate
MORE THAN 70,000 children in Jamaica were reported abused between 2007 and 2015 and the rights of hundreds more have been violated since then, but the Office of the Children’s Advocate (OCA) has been hard-pressed to investigate many of these cases.
Severely understaffed, the OCA, which is mandated to protect and enforce the rights of children while promoting their well-being, is struggling to manage what is a burgeoning caseload.
With four attorneys, six investigators, and no psychologists, the OCA has found itself facing a dilemma and Deputy Children’s Advocate Justice Henderson Downer said the office is only able to touch the tip of the iceberg in relation to the cases that come before it.
“We cannot undertake many of the instances that come before us, so what we do is that we try and deploy the four lawyers that we have to accompany the children to court because, especially when we investigate the cases ourselves, they need someone there if we are not prosecuting to hold their hands,” said Henderson during a recent workshop aimed at forging a national plan of action to respond to violence against children.
“We need more investigators and we need more lawyers,” added Henderson.
Also needed is a psychologist who can help to provide counselling to the children the OCA tries to represent and assist.
“From the very beginning in 2006, when the Office of the Children’s Advocate was set up, we have been asking for a psychologist,” said Downer.
“Up to now, we have not got one. Every child that comes before us has some psychological problem. We have, in fact, a Child Guidance Clinic, but we could never flood the Child Guidance Clinic with the number of cases we have,” Downer lamented.
Given the demand currently placed on the Child Guidance Clinic, Children’s Advocate Diahann Gordon Harrison believes it is sometimes not a practical solution, given the fact that a child might need urgent intervention before they appear in court.
“Without a psychologist on staff, it really compounds our problem and so from time to time, what we have had to do is do our own inhouse counselling for what that is worth,” Gordon Harrison told The Sunday Gleaner.
“Our view is that if we are a child specialist entity that deals with children who are invariably psychologically impacted, having a psychologist on staff is something that will certainly enhance the ability of our office to impact these children in a positive way,” added Gordon Harrison.
Given the number of cases coming forward for further investigation, Gordon Harrison