A shelter for vulnerable women and their children, which was threatened with eviction by its trustees, has been allowed to remain temporarily at its headquarters in Pembroke.

Teen Haven and Teen Services have also been given an assurance of support by the Government, according to Zina Darrell, a board director of the charity.

Ms Darrell said representatives of the charity had appeared on Thursday before magistrate Maria Sofianos in the Family Court, with Ms Sofianos agreeing to grant a single six-month postponement of the eviction.

“The eviction order has been given a stay, so that was taken off the table,” Ms Darrell said.

“We will not be able to go back for more time and we were told that, during the next six months, there needs to be dialogue between the parties.”

Ms Darrell said the heads of the charity had been “encouraged to go back to the table and have a dialogue” with the three-member Haven Trust, which owns its property at 4 Happy Valley Road, where it was placed in 2000.

Teen Haven and Teen Services had been based at Berkeley Hill in Pembroke.

The switch to the latest property, a former residence adjoining the grounds of Fort Hamilton, was negotiated by the Government after the charity’s previous site was swallowed up by the expansion of the Berkeley Institute secondary school.

Roxanne Christopher, the Teen Services chairwoman, announced on Tuesday, alongside executive director Wendy Augustus and clinical social worker Elaine Charles, that relations between the Teen Services board and the Haven Trust had become acrimonious, with the trustees declining to speak any more with them and ordering the charity to surrender the property.

A lawyer for the Haven Trust said at the time that the group declined to comment.

The board said the charity had been ordered to leave the property by the end of October. The group believed there were plans in train to privately develop the site.

Ms Darrell told The Royal Gazette yesterday: “Clearly, there is room for this to be amicable and come to something permanent.”

While she declined to give details on who in the Bermuda Government had spoken with the charity, she said: “They have indicated to us that they will and do support us in our mission.

“All I can say is there was a definite indication of support for Teen Haven. I am not privy to say who attended.

“I’m very cognisant of respecting the negotiations and the meeting was private.”

Ms Darrell said the group wanted to wait until “the dust has settled”.

She added: “We have to be mindful that there is the spirit of the law and the letter of the law.

“The letter of the law gives them permission to evict us but the spirit of the law makes it unethical.”

Teen Services revealed this week that under the original legislation, neither Teen Services nor Teen Haven were specifically named as beneficiaries of the Trust, which had a broad mandate simply to act for vulnerable women.

Ms Darrell said: “Trust law and the law in general has been revised quite a few times since the mid-1960s.

“I believe that what needs to happen is those documents need to be looked at in earnest. They are not relevant any longer to the purpose of the trust. They are not relevant under trust law.

“We need to get those documents revamped and revised in such a way that both parties are happy and can agree to work together.”

She said the charity had been working throughout with the law firm Cox Hallett Wilkinson. She added: “We were all caught up in emotions and hope that now, with the eviction off the table, we can do that.”

Previously, Ms Christopher had stated that the Teen Haven shelter, which has now evolved to accommodate older women, had no residents at present and had turned people away because officials could not risk women and children being exposed to the “trauma” of police and bailiffs attending the property to enforce the eviction.

Ms Darrell said there was a possibility now that the charity might be able to assist clients in the short term.

“We hope that we may be able to look at that moving forward and accept people into the facility — it’s doable.”