Log In

Reset Password
Get your paper Delivered $1.55 per paper Now Subscribe Now
69 °F
Mostly cloudy
2025-01-25T01:25:00-04:00

Learning from Uncle Sam

IT WAS three years ago that the US Consulate first offered the opportunity for civil servants to visit agencies in the United States with a view to broadening their professional outlook. This year, from October 28 through November 7, Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Social Rehabilitation Wayne Carey, was part of a five-member team, invited through the Voluntary Visitor Programme (VolVis) to explore a number of American organisations that have proven successful in helping improve the lives of families. He spoke with Mid-Ocean News reporter Heather Wood and photographer Chris Burville about the experience.

* * *

Q: What is VolVis?

A: VolVis is a voluntary visitor programme which was developed in the 1940s by the US Department of State. It was created in order to bring people, really from all over the world, to the United States on a voluntary visitor exchange programme so they can learn about the history, culture and some of the institutions that are in the US. For our purpose - and this is the third year which the Government of Bermuda has participated in this programme - the benefit that the Bermuda teams get out of this is experience is the opportunity to network with professionals that are in our respective fields, we get the opportunity to also see what’s at the cutting edge in terms of some of the areas that we work in and to try and bring back information that may be useful here in Bermuda.

Q: What particular fields are we talking about?

A: This particular exchange programme this year was titled ‘Healthy Families, Healthy Children’ and so the focus was all about the development of family. And there were five of us that participated this year - myself as Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Social Rehabilitation, Gina Hurst-Maybury, she’s the director of the Department of Court Services, Miriam Mitchell, who’s a social worker, part of the Cross Ministry Initiative team and with the Department of Child and Family Services and a Bermuda Housing Corporation representative, Komlah Foggo-Wilson, she’s the support services manager there. And the fifth member of the team is actually someone from a non-governmental organisation, Carlton Simmons. He’s a member of the Youth on the Move group. And we all were interested in learning what we can about a number of organisations.

Q: How does the programme work?

A: In advance of actually going on this trip, each member of the team has to actually submit areas of interest and, if possible, specific programmes that they would like to see. The State Department then takes all this information in and then tries to match those needs with particular programmes or institutions in the US. So you have some idea before you go of what you’re going to see but you really aren’t sure until the very last minute. What we found is that the diversity of programmes was very broad and that suited us because we definitely wanted to see a range of programmes in the area of development of families.

Q: Where did you visit?

A: There were 14 different places that we went to in the US, in three different cities. We went to New York City, we also went to Washington DC and we spent some time between Syracuse and Ithaca - both in New York.

Q: Which organisations were involved?

A: In New York City we had the New York City Administration for Children’s Services, we had the Committee for Hispanic Children and Families, we visited the Harlem’s Children’s Zone - which was a great experience - the Children’s Aid Society Community Schools and the Ackerman Institute for the Family. In Syracuse and Ithaca, we visited Cornell University. There is a Family Development Training and Credentialing Programme there, which was very, very good. Also in Syracuse we visited the Onondaga County Family Court where we actually got to sit in on a family court in action. There’s a judge by the name of Judge Martha Mullroy and she was very accommodating. She took us on a tour of the entire building and we saw all of the different structures of the building, the courtrooms, it was great. But beyond that we actually did sit in on cases that involved delinquency, that involved child supervision and, a custody case. So we got to see some of these things in action. And in that case it was interesting because of her approach. She’s child-centred. She definitely wants to promote the best interests of the child and that came through in terms of how she handled each of her various clients in court and so I thought that was a very useful experience. We also visited the New York State Office of Children and Family Services and we visited the (West Middle School of the) Booker T. Washington Community Centre.

Q: And in Washington?

A: The US Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families. We also visited the National Fatherhood Initiative - that was fascinating as well - and the East of the River Clergy Police and Community Partnership, which is a very good example of a public-private partnership. It’s a great (display) of community, police, as well as government coming together. It’s a faith-based organisation and it was really very good. The Latin American Youth Centre, we visited as well, was another excellent, excellent programme. One of the things that we found about these organisations is that they actually have programmes that encompass so much. They take an individual and they don’t just look at the problems of that child, they look at the problems of the family and they have programmes that span the gamut. They have parental involvement in these programmes and this is one of the things that we found is critical to the success of these programmes. Some of the parents work there. Some of them get involved in some of the programming and they really are dynamic. For instance at the Latin American Youth Centre they have a lot of visual arts. You can see murals on the wall that were painted by all of the children. They have classes that were going on at the same time as we did the tour and we got to meet some of the children. It was really, really very intriguing.

Q: Why?

A: These kinds of organisations - the East of the River Clergy Police and Community Partnership and the Latin American Youth Centre - they actually go beyond what you would think of in a traditional community centre-type approach because it’s holistic and that’s one of the things that we found is important, to really build a strong community and government partnership. The Fishing School was the final one we visited in Washington DC, which was also a good experience as a non-governmental organisation. The reason it’s called Fishing is it’s a faith-based organisation and it stems from the biblical theme of if you give someone a fish, then they’ll have a fish for one day, if you teach someone to fish, they can get fish for a lifetime. So it’s based on that biblical premise and they do things that are definitely faith-based. They’re undergoing a strategic planning exercise right now where they’re trying to chart their course going forward.

Q: Any specific thing that might work here?

A: I think that one of the things that all of us felt was that the Cornell University Family Development Training and Credentialing Programme is one of the things that we want to bring here. Either we will look towards having someone from that facility come here and do training or possibly have people go there. I think possibly the former is going to be more cost effective. The reason that we’re attracted to this programme is because it’s based on a lot of research and it’s been implemented in the US for approximately 15 years now and the basis for it is that it ensures that workers from different kinds of agencies are trained in the same way when they’re dealing with family development issues. That is to say they concentrate on a family’s strengths rather than going into a family and saying, ‘Okay, what’s wrong with this particular family*?>*’ A child might be on drugs or might have HDAD. Whatever challenge it is, these things are addressed, but what they’re actually trying to do is to build on the strengths of a family and not focus so much on the negative aspects. And when you build on the strengths of a family that means that the family is finding things to bring them together, rather than pull them apart. If you have a lot of social service agencies that are trained in this technique then we feel we’ll have a more uniform approach to the delivery of services. Because not only will we have trained agencies such as Child and Family Services and Child and Adolescent Services and the Family Centre, both government and non-government will have the same grounding in how to deal with families. So we think this is a good programme. We’re researching now to see some of the outcomes this approach has had in the US before we actually engage Cornell University in training.

Q: And you weren’t aware of the Cornell programme beforehand?

A: I should point out that in fact the Ministry, through the Department of Child and Family Services, already had contacts at Cornell University. They have a therapeutic foster care programme that the Department is connected to and also they do a family prevention programme there. So we were exposed to Cornell and some of the work that they do but this year we had the opportunity to visit and talk to the person who actually does this programme. She provided us with their manuals in terms of how they train and so forth. So now we have the opportunity to examine it in detail and to determine how best to promote it in Bermuda.

Q: Any other highlights?

A: What we found when we went to the New York State Office of Children and Family Services is they’ve initiated a programme called the Forty Developmental Assets. And what that programme does is that it causes children to really reflect on the positive experiences and the personal qualities that they need in order to succeed. Again, it tries to highlight positive things. Rather than looking and saying, ‘Okay, how can we fix this problem that this person has*?>*’ it’s focusing on those positive attributes that a young person can emulate and if you focus on those, then you will get results. You will make progress with the development of children and ultimately the development of families. The good thing about these Forty Developmental Assets, these principles, they can be incorporated into social service programmes across the spectrum. So if you’ve got prevention programmes, if you have direct intervention programmes, if you’re trying to solve a particular issue, and also aftercare. These are the kinds of programmes that we’re really looking for and this is something that, in fact, the Department of Court Services has individuals who are on course, training in the Developmental Assets techniques. And so we want to expand use of this technique in the social service agency field in Bermuda.

Q: Why was all this deemed necessary? What’s happening on the island that demanded this exploration?

A: It’s an opportunity. It’s an opportunity for our professionals to sharpen their saws. It’s an opportunity for them to see how another jurisdiction, in this instance the United States, is advancing programmes on family development. There is, for instance, a programme which we also have a lot of interest in called Head Start. Head Start is an early childhood education programme but it’s not just education - that’s the interesting thing about it. It wraps around all of those social service issues that face families in the early days. In the US the Head Start programme pre-screens children in the first 45 days of that programme. It pre-screens them for behavioural and emotional disorders. And so it seeks to catch those things at an early stage when they can direct those parents and those children to the appropriate help that they need, in order to get the children to succeed in the educational system.

Q: Does Bermuda have anything like that?

A: We have something that’s comparable here in the sense that the Happy Valley Day Care Centre, whilst it hasn’t adopted officially the Head Start approach, it’s beginning to operate on the similar principles. There’s referrals. If they see things that are happening in the children, then they involve other agencies to try and collectively address issues that are affecting individuals and families. So the whole thing is to recognise that if you want to improve the life of the individual, you have to base it on improvement of the life of a family. It’s key in Bermuda where you have both traditional and non-traditional families - you have a lot of single-parent families in Bermuda as well as two-parent families etc. And so whatever a person’s concept of a family is, we need to strengthen it. And that’s where the Voluntary Visitor Programme to the US I think, will ultimately give us big benefits down the road in some of these programmes that we can bring back and we can try them. We can implement them and see what are the benefits and the outcomes that they’ve had to Bermudian society.

Q: I noticed most of the centres you mentioned are urban-based. Why is that?

A: To some extent. In Syracuse some of them were not as urban but by and large, they tend to be urban centres. And they also tend to be - many of them - based on low-income families where they don’t necessarily have access to some of the same resources that higher income people tend to have. That is also useful because it’s not too dissimilar here where we have families that tend to be at the lower end of the economic spectrum that do require assistance and aren’t necessarily even aware of the kinds of things that are available to help their children.

Q: You mentioned Youth on the Move. What is that?

A: Youth on the Move is a youth development organisation. Relatively new - my guess is within the last five years or so - and the president of that organisation had the opportunity as well, to go on this trip with us. His interest is in youth development and so he found many of these programmes extraordinarily interesting - the Forty Developmental programme, the Family Development Training and Credentialing Programme at Cornell. He also was impressed by the larger organisations - the Harlem Children’s Zone, the Latin American Youth Centre, the East of the River Clergy Police Community Partnership. These organisations represented - I think it’s probably fair to describe them as ‘the cutting edge’ in terms of social service agencies. They have either federal, city or state funding but they also have a lot of parental involvement and they have accountability and commitment. They’re based on different models. For example the Harlem Children’s Zone, that model is really based on having a defined geographic area and focusing on impoverished groups within that area and not trying to be everything to all people. The Harlem Children’s Zone has been there for quite some time now. And so they’ve developed over the years. They have a programme for instance, whereby they have what they call a tenant lease programme where they encourage and assist tenants in getting homes, to empower families by assisting them in that way. There’s one or two other organisations that do similar things - they don’t go quite as far as that but they help families with rent and furniture and things like that.

Q: How do you create a successful programme that has so many different responsibilities?

A: To me it’s one of the singular features of the way that social services agencies - do and increasingly should - operate these days. To look at the whole needs of the family rather than just, okay you’ve solved a problem with a child that has a particular issue. Maybe a child has a physical challenge of some sort but then there’s other needs that the family as a whole has to address. And in Government, what I think we’re trying to do is to continuously ensure that we have the integration of social services. Government is not a community organisation so we can’t do what community organisations do in terms of helping families and helping individuals. We have to do it from a government perspective, that’s to say we have discreet agencies that do a number of things. But what we can do is to ensure that there is - and we’re doing a lot more of it now - what we call case conferencing where we have professionals from different kinds of social service agencies that come together to discuss situations and to try and move situations forward with respect to a particular family. For instance at the Ministry of Social Services, we have Child and Family Services and financial assistance. In Health, we have the Department of Health and in the Ministry of Public Safety and Housing we have housing initiatives. And we try to wrap those services around each other. When we hear about situations dealing with a physically challenged person, it’s the physically challenged aspect, but it’s also the housing aspect, it’s the financial aspect. Sometimes that family has issues with children that are in care of - Family Services and the like. We find that it’s very helpful when we get exposure to these kinds of programmes that reinforce the way that we are doing business in terms of social service agencies but beyond that to also see how these agencies - in many instances public-private partnerships, in some instances government agencies themselves - are doing things. The Head Start programme is an example of a government programme in New York which is dealing with a range of issues under that early childhood development banner. So those are the things we find are exciting and very interesting.

Q: You mentioned plans to encourage NGOs to participate in the Cornell training. How do you plan to do that?

A: Well I think that one of the reasons that this individual here was on this particular visit was that coming from the NGO sector, he can see the range of possibilities there are for organisations like his to engage. I think he’s enlightened. In fact, I might take the opportunity to correct something that was not quite reported correctly in the other newspapers and that is that at the press conference (on the Voluntary Visitor Programme), he stated that his organisation is interested in developing a community technology centre. And it was reported, unfortunately, as though the VoluntaryVisitor team embraced that concept, which is not correct. He said ‘we’ at the press conference and the ‘we’ was his organisation, not the Voluntary Visitor group.At the present time the Government doesn’t have any position on a community technology centre but it’s something he has a vision for, which was inspired from this Voluntary Visitor Programme. At least two or three of the organisations that we saw had very good computer labs and computer programmes associated with their community organisations.