Officials get help dealing with teens

A course designed to teach adults how to understand and work with teenagers is being held at the University of West Indies School of Continuing Studies. The course was first held in Belize in 1996 and according to training officer, Helen Rosalez, this time around twenty-five participants are taking part in the training session.

Helen Rosalez, Trainer, NCH Action for Children

“They are social workers, most of them. We have quite a number of people from the prison, the community rehab. We have from Human Development, we have from Ministry of Education, and we have from the Youth Hostel, Cadet Corps, so they are basically people who work with young people. They are gathering skills to help them with their job as they go back to the work place. This course is going to be a one month course, it comes in three phases. The first phase which starts until today goes until the end of July. Then beginning of August until the end of October, these participants will go out into their community where they are going to be involved in an independent project. They are going to be imparting some of the knowledge and the skills that they have gathered in the first phase to the community where they work.”

Rosalez says that the participants will take part in counselling seminars in the programme’s third phase in November.