Children’s Commissioner Helen D’Amato said she could not comment on accusations that her office was “absent” and “toothless” since she was not sure what was being referred to.

Children’s matters cut across the process of administration of a whole country

She invited anyone who had complaints about work carried out by her office to contact it so such issues could be addressed.

The Children Commissioner’s office came under fire by professionals in the field during a seminar organised by the Ideat Foundation, a Labour Party think-tank.

Joe Gerada, former CEO of the Social Welfare Foundation, said that while many children’s institutions had “deficiencies”, the Children Commissioner’s office was the “most worrying” and its absence was glaringly obvious.

During a discussion meeting speakers spoke about the need to increase resources available to the office, the need to empower it legally and said some reports remained on the shelf.

The lack of resources has been a problem from the beginning and was pointed out by the first commissioner, Sonia Camilleri, who said the government was not putting its money where its ideas were.

When contacted for a reaction Ms D’Amato, who is Malta’s third commissioner, said that the role of the commissioner was determined by law. Her office’s main role was advocating children’s rights.

The law also gave her office the power to investigate certain issues concerning children’s rights. This had been done in the past. Recently, the office of the commissioner drew up a report after investigating services offered to juvenile offenders. This resulted in the setting up of a task force.

Ms D’Amato said that since the office was set up, some eight years ago, recourses had increased and the number of people working there went up to five from two. Apart from this, awareness about the office had spread.

“Children’s matters cut across the process of administration of a whole country and, as this office becomes known to people, we get a wider range of concerns,” she said.

There was a limit to how much five people could accomplish yet the staff kept pushing to see results of their hard work, she said.

Ms D’Amato added that the office also had to give its opinion on various international documents published by, for example, the EU and the Council of Europe.

“I don’t exclude that some reports remain on the shelf but I don’t know what they (speakers at the Labour think-tank) were talking about exactly,” she said adding that there were various reports that did lead to practical recommendations.

A spokesman for the Family Ministry said the Children’s Commissioner’s office was set up in 2003 and since then, it has been an important institution which brought forward various issues pertaining to children.

“During these years, there is more awareness on children’s rights and the Commissioner for Children has been an important source to address children’s issues... Over the years government has increased the resources in the office... and it is continually evaluating the resources of all its entities,” the spokesman said.