Plan of Action to Protect Children

State Minister in the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information, Hon. Floyd Green, says the National Plan of Action for an Integrated Response to Children and Violence (NPACV) is to be finalised within six months.

This will follow a revision of the document which will incorporate recommendations to come out of a workshop focusing on the plan’s continued development.

The goal of the NPACV is to create and maintain a protective environment, supportive of and responsive to the issues of violence, child abuse and maltreatment of children in Jamaica.

Mr. Green, who was addressing Thursday’s (July 20) staging of a workshop held at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, lamented that the document has been in the planning stage for the past 15 years, and stressed that it is time to have it completed and presented to Cabinet for approval.

He noted that the plan is not to “reinvent the wheel,” but for all stakeholders to work together one final time to “review what we have done so far, update as much as possible and come out of this with a clear direction to ensure that we can have a national plan to treat with the issue of violence against our children.”

The plan, which is to be implemented over a five-year period, involves collaboration among several Government Ministries, Agencies and Departments, civil society groups and other stakeholders.

In his remarks, State Minister in the Ministry of National Security, Senator the Hon. Pearnel Charles Jr., said the problems cannot be solved in isolation, noting that he is pleased to see all the stakeholders working together to enhance mechanisms to protect the nation’s children.

“It is the only approach for us to be successful and to have a sustainable solution to the problems that face our children,” he said.

Senator Charles Jr. called for all involved to “continue to challenge the system, and where there are gaps, where there are deficiencies continue to work together to see how we can solve those issues (regarding violence against children),” he urged.

The core objective of the NPACV is to reduce the impact of violence against children through an integrated approach to prevention, control, intervention responses, monitoring and evaluation.

This is to ensure that the rights of children are preserved, and that an environment is created to stimulate their positive growth and development into productive citizens of Jamaica.

The workshop was staged by the Child Development Agency (CDA) and the Youth Ministry, and sought to address the key issues and challenges pertaining to children as victims, perpetrators and witnesses of acts of abuse.

Additionally, it was also a demonstration to stakeholders and the country of the Government’s willingness and commitment to take on the issue of violence against the nation’s children and show joint Government and private/public partnerships in tackling the issue.

Participants included representatives from the Ministry of National Security, Ministry of Health, CDA, Jamaica Constabulary Force, Youth Ministry, Office of the Children’s Registry, Office of the Children’s Advocate, Ministry of Justice, Hear the Children’s Cry, and civil society organisations.