Barbados Minister Warns of Growing 'Care Deficit' Crisis Amid Shrinking Family Support

Barbados faces a critical “care deficit” that poses a more significant challenge than its economic issues, according to Minister of People Empowerment and Elder Affairs, Kirk Humphrey.

In a stark assessment of the island’s social fabric, Humphrey warned that traditional family support structures are eroding, leaving the State to fill an ever-widening gap in caregiving.

Speaking at the launch of a National Transformation Initiative to train hundreds of home care workers in collaboration with the National Assistance Board (NAB), Humphrey said: “If we’re going to be a caring country, my biggest concern right now is that as the traditional mechanisms of care that are supposed to be the foundation of a society, family and extended family, or people just caring within the family, as those things begin to erode, there is going to be a need for us in the State to play a different role.”

The minister for social care highlighted the urgent need for societal change, pointing to troubling trends in elder care and instances of abandonment.

“I think we built a society with the assumption that the family would carry a significant part of the burden. And what you are seeing every day in different manifestations is that the family is no longer playing that role,” he observed.

Humphrey’s comments came as he announced a major training initiative for over 600 NAB staff members, aimed at enhancing their caregiving skills.

He emphasised the importance of compassion in public service: “We have to expose our staff to higher levels of training so that when they engage with other people in public, people sense a degree of compassion. And there’s not everything you can teach, but I do believe there’s some things we can convey.”

The minister called for a fundamental shift in hiring practices, urging a focus on candidates with genuine empathy.

“There are a number of people who come forward with eight million qualifications and present themselves for a job, but the bigger requirement is that they care about other people,” he said. “We have to start asking different questions beyond ‘what your degree is — did you get honours?’ Those kinds of questions: ‘Tell me what you have done growing up; what have you done for other people?’”

Suggesting a novel approach to addressing the care deficit, Humphrey proposed integrating the arts into caregiving practices.

“We have people who are in the arts, but we’re not using the arts. And my [permanent secretary] and I have been discussing for too long how we include the arts in our practice. Part of our training, but beyond our training, how do we include the arts in the work that we do? How do we include the arts in communicating this message of care? Because in my mind, that is the biggest deficit this country has to face.”