Enact Children’s Act at once, Labour spokesman insists

The Children’s Act should be enacted immediately to ensure children’s rights did not remain on paper but were translated into facts, Labour MP Justyne Caruana said.

The law, which has been in the pipeline for more than a decade, aims to safeguard children’s rights.

Malta’s first Children’s Commissioner, Sonia Camilleri, had been highly critical of the absence of such a law despite Malta’s promise to the UN in 2000 it was in the process of drawing one up.

Dr Caruana, Labour spokes- man for children, welcomed the recent announcement that care orders would be examined by a task force being set up by the Children’s Commissioner to look into the efficiency of services offered to young offenders.

She said Labour had long been insisting on the need to review the care order system as there were cases of children who remained with their abusive families due to a lack of resources.

Social workers were not coping with children’s needs due to a dearth of resources, Dr Caruana said as she called for the implementation of recommendations made by the Children’s Commissioner’s office.

Last week, Children’s Commissioner Helen D’Amato said a task force, which she will head, was expected to be set up very soon. It will look into recommendations recently made by an inquiry board on the services offered to juvenile delinquents and the issue of care orders that was the subject of another report published last year.

The care order report pointed out that young children should not be put in residential homes with older children and that children with challenging behaviour should not stay in the same homes as those who are there because of lack of alternative placing.

The report also stressed the need for immediate financial, structural and human investment to protect minors.