Number of child diversion officers doubled to handle increased demand

 

The Ministry of Justice has doubled the number of child diversion officers to accommodate increased referrals from the courts and the Jamaica Constabulary Force.

 

Justice Minister Delroy Chuck made the disclosure recently while delivering the main address during the Child Diversion Forum in St. Andrew.

 

Since 2020, the Justice Ministry has been redirecting children aged 12 to 17 from the formal justice system to its National Child Diversion Programme.

 

Mr. Chuck says participants benefit from mentorship, individual and family counselling, educational and skills training, drug counselling and sexual and reproductive health education.

 

"I want to emphasize, ladies and gentlemen, that not only is the programme going extremely well, but the number of persons who have benefitted have increased enormously and the number of referrals we're getting from the courts and from the police have also increased. So we have had to double up the number of child diversion officers in each of the parishes," he noted, as he called for UNICEF to provide more asistance to aid in the expansion of the programme. 

 

Minister Chuck said the National Child Diversion Programme is to be further expanded, allowing school officers to make referrals. But he said due to the demand for the programme, some referrals have not been accepted because of human resource constraints. 

 

He urged socially conscious, well-thinking members of the society, especially Justices of the Peace, to volunteer as mentors under the programme.

 

"We do need more mentors and I'm appealing, we've trained over 400 mentors, but not everyone is readily available and usually the mentorship is voluntary. Usually many of the youngsters, after they engage the mentor, they don't want to leave the mentor. So I'll be urging across Jamaica for more persons, especially retired persons who have some time, to be trained."