New acts advance social development

(CNS): Parliament adjourned on a relative high note, Monday, after government steered through a collection of bills advancing Cayman’s social development safety net. The amendment bills were largely the work of the former minister, Andrè Ebanks (WBS) and deal with improvements to child safeguarding and protecting the elderly.

The MP said the Children (Amendment) Bill was particularly important and designed to “give our children a fighting chance” especially when they don’t have a safety net at home.

The bill is one of four pieces of legislation drafted to improve the social support and protection for the country’s more vulnerable families including the Maintenance (Amendment) Bill, 2024, the Adoption Bill, 2024 and the Older Persons (Amendment) Bill, 2024.

The bills were presented by Minister Kenneth Bryan who took over the social development portfolio in November following the resignation of Ebanks and three of his colleagues as a result of unrelated fundamental differences of opinion with the remaining UPM government. Bryan detailed the clauses in the bills and their stated aims.

But Ebanks had worked on all four bills for several years. Throughout his time as the minister for social welfare he has completely overhauled the system to establish a new regime to assist all families in Cayman who are struggling to make a living. As he spoke about the amount of work that had gone into these new acts and their importance he said that there was still a lot of work to do to fully develop the country’s welfare safety net.

“It burns on the inside with the amount of wealth that is in this country…that we need a food bank and that food bank struggles to meet the demand,” he said.

Overall, the four bills which modernise the way we protect children and the elderly offer new and increased support and resources to the most vulnerable people in the community. Ebanks said, they “significantly enhanced” the country’s social development framework. “I was honoured to marshall (the bills) from proposal to publication …and grateful the minority government brought these forward for debate and passage by Parliament,” he added.

In total some 64 clauses in the Children Act have been amended including a last minute change paving the way for kids who lose a parent in road collision to get compensation. Posting on social media after parliament adjourned Ebanks said the landmark amendment enables the courts to order financial compensation from individuals found liable for the death of a child’s parent due to certain criminal acts. This compensation will be directed towards the child’s maintenance and upbringing, and it is referred to as the Shemiah Grant order. “Hopefully this helps, as a deterrent, to make our roads safer,” he added.

Grant was killed in a road collision in West Bay in May 2021 and was the sole breadwinner for his family which has struggled not only with the emotional trauma of losing a loved one but also to make ends meet in the absence of any compensation. Jordon Telford was convicted of causing Grant’s death through dangerous driving as he was texting at the time but no compensation order was made by the courts.

Telford was s serial traffic offender and was jailed for almost four and a half years for killing Grant but with the loss of his job after the crash and his incarceration there was no expectation that Telford would be able to make any financial restitution – a problem the courts will still have to face even under the new legislation. In future government will need to begin looking at developing its own compensation fund to assist families in need who lose working parents to accidents on the road or at work where there is no means for the family to secure compensation from those responsible.

The Children act also establishes a commissioner for children and younger persons, parental rights and adoption of children by persons in marriages and civil partnerships, foster care, child maintenance, the powers of the court when restricting the liberty of a child and the repealing of various aspects of the previous law.

The maintenance act focuses on streamlining provisions for child maintenance by consolidating financial orders and removes dated references and provisions while ensuring protections for children and young people. The new adoption act strengthens adoption laws to uphold rights and ensure safeguards for all involved in the process with the establishment of an adoption board and enables Cayman to participate in the Hague Intercountry Adoption Convention making it easier for local families to adopt children from overseas.

See the details of the bills on the parliament website and watch the proceedings on CIGTV Youtube channel below starting with the Children’s bill.