Students from the Coleridge and Parry Secondary School receiving information from the health representative, Joyce Boyce, who was present at one of the booths on display at the Probation Department’s Open Day.
It is important that probation officers are trained and retrained in order to handle and stay abreast of changes in society.
This is according to Deputy Chief Probation Officer, Angela Odle, as she spoke with The Barbados Advocate during an open day yesterday morning at the Probation Department.
“Whatever goes on in the general society will spill off into the homes and schools, and as a result we are seeing a more resistant type of client now. We’re seeing things that the juveniles 20 or 16 years ago would not have done that the juveniles of 2017 are into,” she said.
Therefore, it is imperative that the officers and juvenile assistants are on the “cutting edge”.
“We have to be on the go and train and retrain, and putting it in Bajan parlance, ‘get with it’ so that our supervision would be on par with what is going on now. It means that we tweak our methods and some of us go to training and attend workshops that expose us to the best practices out there,” she said.