Child Protection officials overwhelmed with hundreds of cases

Oct 11, 2010 News

– Neesa’s case with agency for over a year

Some members of the Child Care and Protection Unit at the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security are insisting that their supervisors knew the officer who was handling the case was unable to contact the troubled teen.
The 19 child protection officers each have a caseload of literally hundreds of children and the manner with which reporting is done is that the officers upon their return from field visits would log what transpired in a specified book.

Neesa Lalita Gopaul

This book is reviewed daily by the supervisors and according to the Child Protection Officer who was the one that was working the case, she is certain that the supervisor knew that she was not making contact with Neesa.
Further the officer blamed the ridiculous manner in which records are kept pointing out that it was only recently that she was given the case and even more recent that she learnt that the case was reported to the Ministry and that they had a file on Neesa for a year now.
The Officer said that she will be making a public statement on the matter soon. She concluded that from the various statements emanating it seems that she has already been found culpable, although she did what she was required to.
She said that she feels that she has already been judged and found guilty as it relates to the breakdown which resulted in Gopaul’s death
Some of the Child Protection Officers visited this newspaper over the weekend and related a tale of horrid working conditions.
They say that it is the supervisor who failed Gopaul because the supervisor knew that the Child Protection Officer was not making contact with the teenager and did not take any further action.
The officers explained that they are divided into districts and would have as much as 300 cases per individual to follow up on and apart from what the call verbal abuse they have a less than desired working conditions.
The lamented the lack of proper record keeping adding that had there been a computerized database in place when the Officer took over the Gopaul case a month ago she would have been well equipped with the relevant background of the case.
Responding to comments that the members of that department are among the better paid members of the public sector the Child Protection Officers said that this is far from the truth.
Neesa Lalita Gopaul body, with most of her head missing, was discovered stuffed in a suitcase and anchored in a creek in the vicinity of the Emerald Tower Resort.
Her mother Bibi Sherima Gopaul and her mother’s lover, gym instructor Jarvis Small have since been charged with her murder and remanded to prison.
Minister of Human Services and Social Security Priya Manickchand has conceded that there was a breach of protocol and has launched an investigation to seek to identify where specifically did the system failed as well as to identify recommendations to ensure that a similar situation never reoccur.