On Tuesday 15^th December Minister Francourt met with the Senior Management Team of the Social Affairs Department to discuss the achievements as well as challenges encountered during the year 2020.

With the pandemic situation, the Department had to re-adjust in regards to the services offered taking into account that Social Workers are considered as essential workers and had to be available at all times to assist the community and families in need.

The Department was able to continue with the different programmes such as Parenting Education, Professionalization of services for the domiciliary care workers, promote elderly wellbeing despite encountering many challenges like a lack of commitment from partners to attend sessions, lack of employer’s collaboration for staff release and was not able to conduct some training due to the Health Restriction measures.

Many discussions were also conducted with the different policy papers and laws presented to Cabinet and were approved for example the Children (Amendment) Act 2020 on the issue of ban on corporal punishment, ratification of the optional protocol to the convention of the right of child (CRC)  on a communication procedure, to name a few.

The Minister used this occasion to thank the management team for their hard work during 2020. She commented that staff needed to also “self-care” as their work can be very intensive and demanding.

On that note, the Minister, Management and Staff of Social Affairs would like to wish all the families a peaceful and wonderful Christmas and a Happy New year 2021.