NEWLY APPOINTED MANAGER YOLANDE?FORDE of the National Council on Substance Abuse (NCSA) is planning to take the organization into households and the community.
Forde, speaking to the WEEKEND NATION yesterday during a youth seminar at Solidarity House, Harmony Hall, St Michael, said she was determined to address what she saw as the “missing links” in their programmes.
“We do have school programmes for both primary and secondary schools. However, there is a very important missing link – the home.
“At the end of the day, a child does not raise him- or herself, [he or she has] parents or guardians who have a role to play in providing a moral framework and base in which the child needs to operate. This is what is in fact causing a lot of problems in our society,” she said.
Forde said she would be thinking of what strategies they could develop to link their school programmes with the home because if the home was not a favourable environment, their school programmes would be undermined.
“If there is someone in the home either using [drugs] or not providing the quality parenting needed to ensure the child is being guided and properly supervised, these problems will come back to haunt us as a wider society.
“If you have a household which does not match the ethos and culture of the school, that is very problematic because there is no support system to back up what the school is doing.
“Some mechanism must be found to reach the home; if not, we would be giving a message which is not being reinforced or [the children] would be receiving contrary messages,” she said.
Forde said it was equally important to teach some adults about the dangers of drugs, especially marijuana. She said there were some who were ignorant about it and children learnt more from what they saw than what they were told.
Another aspect Forde said she wanted to address was the community. She said there were places in Barbados where people used marijuana “as if it was legal”.
“The extent to which we are losing a number of young people to the ravages of illegal drugs and alcohol is unacceptable.
“We need to intensify our work in the community and find more approaches and strategic initiatives which would allow us to penetrate those communities who need it the most,” she said.
Forde took up her new position on January 10 after previous manager Tessa Chaderton-Shaw was severed in March last year.
In the interim, a number of people from the NCSA had acted in the position.
Forde has a background in criminology and said there was a nexus between crime and drugs so she saw her role as a good fit for her. (CA)
