Chief Magistrate Ian Weekes Advocates for National Parenting Programme with Law Court Support

Chief Magistrate Ian Weekes has recommended the creation of a National Parenting Programme (NPP) that would receive help from the law courts.

Many young men may attribute a life of crime to poor parenting practices during their boyhood, he told the Annual Men’s Retreat of the Cave Hill Wesleyan Holiness Church held at its sister church in Ellerton, St George.

“Whether the children, in the long run, attended [the parenting sessions], there will be sessions for that…because, just like if you go to a guidance counsellor and your child has a particular problem, we may have to work with you, and we may have to have sessions separate with you and then with you in relation to the child,” he said.

Weekes said he anticipates there would be sessions where parents and children get together under such a programme.

“You basically have to teach people how to raise children because they don’t have a clue,” said the top judicial officer. “They do not understand the influences, they don’t understand social media, they don’t understand their [children’s] classmates.

“The thing with this generation is that the National Parenting Programme may not help a lot of parents now. We would still work with them. But if we put this in place, all the ones that are bringing up children in the future, we will be able to guide them.”

However, Weekes maintained that though sometimes it seems like all is lost, institutions such as the church and some of the non-governmental organisations which have various programmes can get all of these programmes to work.

“So long as we are confident in them, I think that these types of interventions will also work,” he added.

Weekes is contending that while parents who benefit from free government-funded pre-natal and post-natal care may be mandated to attend parenting programmes, the same is not automatic at the private level.

“If you are delivering a child free at source, it is mandatory attendance for you. If you have a child, and you deliver that child at one of the private medical facilities, it will not be mandatory; but if a problem developes with that child, you should be mandated to attend parenting. That is the way that you can deal with it,” he suggested in relation to his parenting proposal.

“I [suggested] the National Parenting Programme because we have a number of persons who are accessing free care. If you are delivering all the children and you are not working, for instance…you have that in Barbados too… we have people who come to me and they talk about how hard it is to raise the two [children].”