Child Development Agency to hire more investigators on a temporary basis

Youth minister Lisa Hanna has announced that the Child Development Agency (CDA) is to hire additional investigators on a temporary basis to investigate and clear the number of child abuse cases being reported daily.

She has directed the CDA to focus and target specific communities across the island that have known cases of child abuse that are not being reported to the state.

The ministry says the Office of the Children’s Registry receives approximately 220 reports of child abuse per week with a total of about 11,440 per year.

It says the parishes accounting for the majority of the abuses are Westmoreland, Kingston and St Andrew, St Catherine and St James.

The ministry says since 2014, the CDA has investigated and cleared 4,000 cases of the 7,000 backlog while still having to deal with current reports of cases of child abuse.