A Long­denville fam­i­ly of nine chil­dren and three grand­chil­dren had their pleas for help an­swered when they were vis­it­ed on Mon­day by Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, Sen­a­tor Don­na Cox, ac­com­pa­nied by a team of tech­ni­cal of­fi­cers from the Min­istry, bear­ing food re­lief ham­pers, and dis­cussing what as­sis­tance the Min­istry can pro­vide.

An of­fi­cial state­ment from the min­istry notes that the Min­is­ter’s vis­it fol­lows a re­port of the fam­i­ly’s sit­u­a­tion in a dai­ly news­pa­per, on Sun­day Ju­ly 11th.

Pri­or to the vis­it on Mon­day, the Min­istry, through its Na­tion­al So­cial De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (NS­DP), had ob­tained rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion on the house­hold’s sit­u­a­tion and com­plet­ed an as­sess­ment on the fam­i­ly’s im­me­di­ate re­quire­ments.

Dur­ing the vis­it, Min­is­ter Cox pre­sent­ed the fam­i­ly with a mar­ket box and food ham­pers cour­tesy NAMDE­V­CO, and al­so shared in­for­ma­tion on the var­i­ous grants and ser­vices which are of­fered by the Min­istry. She in­di­cat­ed that she was pleased to see a whole of Gov­ern­ment ap­proach to­wards ren­der­ing as­sis­tance to the fam­i­ly in need.

“Both the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion were con­tact­ed to al­so make an in­ter­ven­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the chil­dren had no birth pa­pers, nor were they en­rolled in any school,” the min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed.

Since the news­pa­per re­port, through re­fer­rals made by the NFSD, the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs has been help­ing with re­gard to ob­tain­ing birth cer­tifi­cates and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards for the fam­i­ly.

In ad­di­tion, the fam­i­ly has re­ceived nu­mer­ous food ham­pers, as well as a fridge and a stove. 

The fam­i­ly cur­rent­ly re­sides on state lands and is in pos­ses­sion of a Cer­tifi­cate of Com­fort.  The min­istry has con­tact­ed the Land Set­tle­ment Agency to pro­vide their non-ob­jec­tion for the client to con­duct nec­es­sary re­pairs on their home, hav­ing ob­tained copies of rel­e­vant doc­u­men­ta­tion in this re­gard.

“On­go­ing ef­forts will be made to bring the fam­i­ly out of their sit­u­a­tion, where op­por­tu­ni­ties for a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life will be ex­plored in the short­est pos­si­ble time,” Min­is­ter Cox as­sured.

The fam­i­ly al­so will re­ceive coun­selling ses­sions and oth­er psy­choso­cial sup­port through rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Min­istry’s Na­tion­al Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (NFSD).