Help is com­ing for both staff and res­i­dents of the St Jude’s Home for Girls. Fol­low­ing a Guardian Me­dia re­port where the man­age­ment of the home called for bet­ter fa­cil­i­ties and oth­er sup­port, the Gov­ern­ment is now promis­ing to find a new lo­ca­tion for the es­tab­lish­ment, as well pro­vid­ing more train­ing for work­ers.

“As you may be aware, the cur­rent fa­cil­i­ty used to house St Jude’s Home for Girls is aged and there­fore, there is need for ma­jor in­fra­struc­tur­al work. Gen­der and Child Af­fairs is ag­gres­sive­ly en­gag­ing key stake­hold­ers with a view to se­cur­ing al­ter­nate mod­ern con­ve­nience for staff and res­i­dents alike,” Min­is­ter Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

The phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture of the home is a ma­jor con­cern for its man­ag­er De­o­raj Sookdeo.

St Jude’s is an un­li­censed fa­cil­i­ty and Sookdeo ex­plained that due to in­fra­struc­tur­al re­stric­tions on the cur­rent com­pound in Bel­mont, it will be dif­fi­cult to have the home up to code be­fore the March 2023 dead­line set by Min­is­ter Web­ster-Roy.

Over­sight for the home was hand­ed over to the State from the Catholic Board in 2015.

On Au­gust 6, a care­giv­er was at­tacked and se­vere­ly in­jured by two girls who were try­ing to es­cape from the in­sti­tu­tion.

Work­ers told Guardian Me­dia this is a con­stant threat they face and they plead­ed for more train­ing to deal with the wards de­scribed as ‘vi­o­lent’.

Ex­press­ing deep sad­ness over the in­ci­dent, Web­ster-Roy said more staff mem­bers were hired and the train­ing for oth­ers will be­gin soon.

“As it re­lates to staffing, the man­age­ment com­mit­tee of St Jude’s Home for Girls has em­barked on the sup­ple­men­ta­tion of its hu­man re­source ca­pac­i­ty. This has in­clud­ed the re­cent hir­ing of 11 new care­givers and two so­cial work­ers to aid in the dy­nam­ic needs of the cur­rent pop­u­la­tion.

“They have ini­ti­at­ed fo­cus on su­per­vi­so­ry ca­pac­i­ty and men­tal health sup­port mech­a­nisms. It has al­so been iden­ti­fied that long­stand­ing staff such as care­givers may not have been ex­posed to ad­e­quate train­ing to fit the cur­rent day needs of chil­dren,” she said.

“As a re­sult, we are rec­ti­fy­ing by en­gag­ing the need­ed sup­ple­men­tal sup­port as well as en­cour­ag­ing self-em­pow­er­ment so that staff are ad­e­quate­ly trained and pro­vid­ed with the tools they need to deal with on­go­ing is­sues.”

Min­is­ter Web­ster-Roy said a psy­chi­atric nurse has been tak­en on to as­sist with men­tal health con­cerns and as­so­ci­at­ed be­hav­iours. She said the home is al­so in the process of sup­ple­ment­ing oth­er po­si­tions, in­clud­ing psy­chol­o­gists, in the near fu­ture.

Web­ster-Roy said the Gen­der and Child Af­fairs Di­vi­sion re­ceived an al­lo­ca­tion in the 2023 Na­tion­al Bud­get for im­ple­men­ta­tion of rec­om­mend­ed ac­tion items of the In­ter-Agency Task Force that was ap­point­ed to re­view the find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions of the 2021 re­port of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion team which looked in­to abuse of chil­dren at chil­dren’s homes, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tres and oth­er in­sti­tu­tions that pro­vide res­i­den­tial care for chil­dren.

An in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Child Pro­tec­tion was al­so ap­point­ed to mon­i­tor the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the ac­tion items.