The Commissioner for Children has urged the prison authorities and the Home Affairs Ministry to improve facilities for children who visit parents at the prisons.
In a report issued on Monday, Antoinette Vassallo said a child-friendly facility is needed alongside the correctional facility at Corradino to accommodate all visits involving children.
The facility should ideally have a separate entrance and be equipped with nappy changing facilities, toys, books and other items to enable children to play with their family members. They should have a welcoming environment which does not look intimidating.
Age-appropriate information should be given to children about the rules and procedures of their visit, such as security checks, in an age-appropriate and friendly manner.
The commissioner also called for ongoing training of professionals and security officials on children’s rights and how to create child-friendly spaces which guarantee children’s rights.
The commissioner visited the prisons and spoke to officials and visitors following public concerns about the lack of facilities for children visiting their parents in prison.
In August, the former dean of the University's Faculty of Social Wellbeing complained about young children seen in the prisons visitors' hall. Andrew Azzopardi said in a Facebook post that in visits he had made to the prisons he had seen young children in the visitors' hall. They were there to meet parents or relatives.
The visitors' halls were totally unsuitable for children, degrading and possibly harmful to their mental state, particularly when they would have gone through traumatic events, he wrote
The Children's commissioner said she was pleased to note that procedures were in place for the early identification of dependents and significant others upon admission to the prisons and taken into consideration upon the drawing up of care plans. This allowed the psycho-social team at the prisons to support inmates and make the necessary arrangements for visitation and contact with children.
In between visits, inmates were able to phone their children/grandchildren via phone as often as they liked and also schedule skype calls.
Inmates who were allowed to leave prison could have contact visits with their children at child-friendly premises in Marsa run by the NGO Mid-Dlam għad-Dawl.
"The welcoming environment (at the Marsa facility) is ideal for children to feel at ease, also since both inmates and CCF officials were dressed in casual clothes. Such a child-friendly environment enables children to build relationships and bond with the inmates through play and other shared activities," the Commissioner said.
But high demand meant that not all children's visits could be made there and other visits were held at CCF in a visiting room which is not specifically allocated for children’s visits, the commissioner said.
Whilst improvements had been made with regards to body searches and the possibility of body contact, the commissioner said she was concerned over the lack of child-friendly facilities, which are crucial to avoid traumatisation of children as well as to promote positive family bonding experiences.