Office of the Children's Advocate, OCA's Child Justice Guidelines recognises discrimination/sexual orientation but .................

DOWNLOAD the DOCUMENT: HERE

The Office of the children's advocate released to the public a document that took some time in the making by a special committee to include the People's National Party human rights lawyer Clyde Williams who also hosts Freshstart on Newstalk 93FM. Speaking on Cliff Hughes hosted Impact last evening he pointed out that the document  guidelines is the only one that takes into account sexual orientation discrimination that goes further than the charter of rights does or was supposed to do until the Lawyers' Christian Fellowship, LCF took care of business.

Definition of a child and more .

The non discrimination clause comes above but the Family Life section seems to omit the inclusion of said sexual orientation in as far as the adults who maybe raising those children, here the document says:

The family is the preferred environment for the care, upbringing and protection of children and this responsibility rests primarily with the parents; separation of children from parents, and by extension their siblings, should be a last resort. 

also of concern to me is above and the the Admissions, Registration, Movement and Transfer section where it says:

"(1) In every place where children are detained or on a correctional order a complete and secure record of the following information should be kept concerning each child received in such an institution:

(a) Information on the child’s identity;

(b) The fact of and reasons for commitment and the authority therefore;

(c) The date and time of admission into the facility;

(d) The date and time of transfer into or out of the facility, as the case may be

(e) The date and time of release from the facility

(f) Details of the notifications to parents and guardians on every admission, transfer or release of the child

in their care.

(g) Details of known physical and mental health problems, including substance abuse.

(h) All interventions made by a relevant authority in whose care the child has been.The details of these interventions are to be documented along with notes that make the continuity of care as least."

Given the present modus operandi and how state actors treat with children in state care I am not sure how the above plays out and worse yet suspected or profiled children who are gay are either ignored, exposed and or physically abused or set upon by adults involved as previous cases have proven. Whether there will be multi-state actors involved including LGBT ones is not clear and whether the child/victim will have to endure multi interviews in a case as the case file travels though the system, I understand that there will be specially trained police officers hopefully to be distributed over many precincts island-wide but will they have capacity for LGBT matters and recognition of LGBT especially transgender and intersex children and which professional will be tied into the mix such as a clinical sexologist or endocrinologist?

I am formulating an email questionnaire to the OCA to find out more on this as my concerns about displacements, forced evictions and subsequent homelessness of MSM mostly in particular is the background to me preparing this post. As I type there is a youngster sitting in my living room who was thrown out of his house by parents right in the middle of parenting and homelessness awareness month.

Overall the guidelines look perfect on paper but as we know in this country we have a major challenge with implementation as proven in times gone by, nice reports, guidelines and summaries but little action to initiate the stated actions.

Peace and tolerance

H