Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Fam­i­ly Ser­vices so­cial work­ers from the So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry met yes­ter­day with Tri­cia Vil­laru­el—the moth­er of mur­dered four-year-old Ama­rah Lal­lite—to do a psy­cho-so­cial as­sess­ment.

This was in­di­cat­ed by Hous­ing Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day. She was re­ply­ing on be­half of the Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment to Op­po­si­tion MP Bar­ry Padarath’s query. Padarath had asked, giv­en the re­cent be­head­ing of Ama­rah, what sup­port was pro­vid­ed to as­sist the de­ceased child’s fam­i­ly.

The lit­tle girl was grue­some­ly killed at her Fifth Street, Five Rivers, Arou­ca home on Mon­day. The Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions yes­ter­day or­dered po­lice to charge a man who lived in the house with the child and her moth­er with the mur­der. The man was tak­en in­to cus­tody on the night of her killing.

Robin­son-Reg­is said the So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry as­signed a Fam­i­ly Ser­vices So­cial work­er (FSSW) on Tues­day to pro­vide fam­i­ly case man­age­ment sup­port for the child’s moth­er and the fam­i­ly.

She said for­mal con­tact was al­so made with the Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Of­fi­cer of the min­istry’s Tu­na­puna branch and arrange­ments were fi­nalised for the con­duct yes­ter­day (Fri), of an as­sess­ment by the FSSW re­gard­ing the psy­cho-so­cial needs of the moth­er and her fam­i­ly.

Robin­son-Reg­is said yes­ter­day, the team of four FSSW work­ers con­duct­ed a home vis­it at a neigh­bour’s house and met Vil­laru­el, where the psy­cho-so­cial as­sess­ment was done and an in­ter­ven­tion plan was draft­ed to be im­ple­ment­ed by so­cial work­ers of the Na­tion­al Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Di­vi­sion, in tan­dem with cri­sis in­ter­ven­tion strate­gies be­ing im­ple­ment­ed by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s Vic­tim and Sup­port Ser­vices Unit.

Robin­son-Reg­is had no in­for­ma­tion on if the fam­i­ly had ap­plied for any as­sis­tance from the min­istry and was de­nied as in­di­cat­ed by Vil­laru­el.