And now to the Women's and Families Support Department, the Government has approved decisions from the Ministry of Human Development, Families and Indigenous Peoples Affairs to improve access and service delivery to ensure comprehensive support services to women and families and provide a strengthened response to domestic violence.
The Cabinet Secretary told the press that Minister Balderamos-Garcia made the request because her ministry does not have enough personnel countrywide to address these sensitive and complex family matters:
Ambassador Stuart Leslie - Cabinet Secretary
"This is something that Minister Balderamos has been working on for some time, trying to find- This is going to require some additional funding, but again, this whole of government approach to looking at some of the social problems across Belize. What Minister Ramos has been saying over and over and over again [is] we've gone through a pandemic. We're going through a rising cost of living. We're going through a number of major economic issues that are having a serious effect on Belizean people, especially Belizean people who are at the lower levels in the economic sphere, and saying that, look, these people are having some stressful times, and so what the government is trying to do is employ more people to do social work, more people to help to do outreach problems, the kind of things that we're hoping that in this consultancy, Giovannie will help us with to reach out to some of those families and provide some of the services that we have not been able to provide. In the Ministry of Human Development, there were so few, that she didn't even have enough social workers to put one in every city. And so what the government is trying to do is give her some more personnel so that she can get on with some more of this work to help people as we go through some of these challenging times because of what is happening across the entire world."
As you heard, this initiative will include the hiring of additional personnel to assist vulnerable groups that may be experiencing a range of social issues.
