Quarantine Facility For Children Entering State Care

The former Windsor Girls’ Home in St. Ann has been modified to serve as a mass quarantine facility for children entering the childcare system.

State Minister in the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information, Hon. Robert Morgan, said that the facility is the first of its kind in the local childcare sector and is important in light of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Staffing and security arrangements are being put in place to facilitate its opening.

“What will happen now is when a child comes into the system the first place they will probably go is to the Windsor Home, where they will be assessed not just for exposure to COVID-19 but also [for psychosocial issues] and then we will have the opportunity to place them in a home for the period that they are interacting with the State,” Mr. Morgan explained.

He was addressing the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA) virtual quarterly press briefing on April 21.

The State Minister said the mass quarantine facility is critical at this time, as many children’s homes do not have purpose-built isolation units.

“The reason this is important is that when a child enters the childcare system we do not know if this child has the coronavirus. Many of our homes, especially our private homes, they never contemplated a pandemic like the coronavirus when they were building their facilities,” he pointed out