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Deputy Prime Minister, Attorney General and Minister of Home Affairs, Freundel Stuart????

Deputy Prime Minister, Attorney General and Minister of Home Affairs, Freundel Stuart, has lauded the Barbados Family Planning Association’s (BFPA) initiatives to strengthen the family structure.

He heaped accolades on the institution recently, while addressing the graduation ceremony of the BFPA’s Family Life Education and Peer Counselling Programme. The event was held at the Barbados Yacht Club, Upper Bay Street, St. Michael.

While acknowledging that thousands of Barbadians had benefitted from the tutelage of the BFPA’s resource personnel, Mr. Stuart added: "I wish to commend the Association for playing such an exemplary role in providing each person who has graduated over the years, with the education and skills necessary for functioning as resource persons within our communities."

The Attorney General told the 50 graduates that the skills they had acquired during the course, would equip them to become peer counsellors and mentors within their respective communities.

Mr. Stuart pointed out: "There is, in contemporary Barbados, no shortage of persons who seek information on family life issues.?? In many cases, they simply want a listening ear, as they do not always want to access the more institutionalised or conventional counselling services."

Even though the rapid societal changes of the 20th century would continue throughout the next one, the Minister said these developments had implications for the stability of the family unit.

Given this situation, Mr. Stuart stated that the BFPA’s mandate of assisting families with family planning had been widened to include "more current concerns and community outreach programmes to reduce the impact of those negative influences which beset today’s society.

"Because our societies have over time become much more secular, the role played by the Church in the area of standards-setting, has correspondingly diminished.?? The values that have held families together in the past, therefore, have tended to weaken in the face of these new realities," he remarked. jwilson@barbados.gov.bb

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