Ask any parent and that mother or father will tell you it is not easy raising a child and the challenge is compounded when the parent is at an age where he or she is just learning how to deal with the everyday stresses of life. It is a situation confronting especially single parents who are tonight struggling to find ways to better parenting. But two groups have reached out to extend a helping hand to these young parents and guide them through the process. Fourteen mothers have taken full advantage of a three week parenting workshop coordinated by the Community Policing Unit and Youth Enhancement Services.
Douglas Hyde, Youth Coordinator - Police Department
“Over the past couple of weeks Youth Enhancement Services and the Community Policing Unit have been discussing how we can put together our efforts as a collaboration in looking on specific areas of training and one of the training that we thought about is the parent training because of the need of addressing these issues, what some of the parents were going through with their kids.”
Jacqueline Godwin,
What are some of the issues being discussed?
Erlett Reneau, Outreach Officer – YES
“Well basically some of our teen moms are single parents and it is just basically to help them in taking care of their kids letting them know that once you’re a teen mom they’re not out there alone and thinking that once you’re a teen mom that people will reject them because they’re a teen mom. There is hope out there once you’re a teen mom because at our center we have sessions with the teen moms and we have different people who come in to facilitate and once we can offer them some support like we could provide them with pampers and milk, we are there to support them.”
Jacqueline Godwin,
This is for three weeks, what happens at the end of the workshop?
Douglas Hyde,
“The participants will receive a certificate and what YES is planning too is that they will continue to do follow up training and sessions with them. In fact there is a plan already that they want to take some of these participants in other programs such as the Lord’s Bank program that YES is presently doing, carrying out right now. We at the Community Policing, what we want to do is to build more skills in these persons in Yabra and so we can utilize them later on in other activities and other programs. We want to build skills in them so they can later teach other persons in the community also.”
The three week parenting workshop is being hosted at the Yarborough Community Policing Centre on Caesar Ridge Road. It is funded by the UNFPA and the Police Department.
