The Challenges at Community Rehab Department

According to Williams, the department, which works under the Ministry of Human Development, does continuous training in an effort to build the capacity of its staff.  Among the challenges, she says, is that persons are apprehensive of working with that population of young girls.

On the Phone: Maureen Williams, Deputy Director, Community Rehabilitation Department

“It’s a hard one, and I have to say it’s a hard one because there aren’t enough layers in the system to meet all the needs of the children that we come in contact with and so they end up here.  And so we’re trying to figure out how, you know, what it is that we need to do.  We are constantly training, we are constantly looking for new officers, looking for people with the kinds of skills and knowledge and aptitude, attitude that we need to help these children.  But it’s a hard sell as well because, I mean, not a lot of people want to work with this population.  If you look at what we see in the news, oftentimes the children are the ones who are seen as the ones giving all the trouble, so a lot of people can’t see past the behavior and want to work with these types of children and so we struggle with getting the right amount of staff, the right types of personalities to work with these children but it’s a work in progress, we have to do what we have to do and so we will continue to look for those people, we will continue to train and we will continue to look at what types of programs and what services we need to provide for these children.”