Around 9,000 families living under difficult circumstances will be supported through the Ministry of Social Protection’s Conditional Cash Transfer programme which is set to be launched soon, GINA said.
The new programme will see the Ministry undertaking a needs and risk assessment of the families to determine what type of assistance is needed to decrease dependence on Public Assistance, and ultimately reduce poverty.
Forbes Monroe, the Ministry’s Chief Probation and Social Services Officer told GINA that the Ministry recognises that families have been receiving the monthly public assistance, but the Ministry found it inadequate to bring about the desired outcomes and therefore the Conditional Cash Transfer programme was devised.
“What has been happening in the past is that we have been placing persons on public assistance, if somebody is in need, a single mother with five children, she will find it difficult in order to provide for those children and while they have the safety net system, which is the public assistance system, we have recognised that we have been giving monies to those persons, but we have not been getting the desired outcomes and so we are now looking at conditional cash transfer,” Monroe told GINA.
He said that a careful needs assessment is necessary, and if families continue to receive monies on a monthly basis, then the Government is not really helping that family.
“What needs to happen is that we must have a careful needs assessment of the family so that we can understand what the family really needs, so it might not just be money, it might be skills that’s lacking, it could be that family may be having other difficulties and if we do not do a proper needs assessment we might not fully understand. We also need to understand (the) risk that family is likely to suffer or faced with, in terms of if the person is not helped financially, what might be the outcome,” Monroe stated.
Once that process is completed, Monroe said, the Ministry will put a better system in place to ensure that the families are assisted in the specific areas, whether it is skills training or access to loans or funds to create income generating projects.
The Ministry will be conducting capacity building sessions, and recruiting additional staff for the Probation Department to ensure that the programme is executed effectively, GINA added.
