Help needed!

The Family Support Network (FSN), which still offers residents and Government various services free of cost, has made another appeal for help with counselling and a more spacious office than the one it occupies in Road Town.

Director at FSN Dr Sylvia Simmons said she is up to her neck in relation to the number of persons she counsels daily, adding that the non-profit organization is in dire need of another counsellor.

“We survive and we thank God that we do have money to keep us here, but we can use another counsellor. We do get a lot of court order clients, and court order clients need to be seen in a timely manner so that they can go back to court with a report saying either their counselling is complete or they need to continue,” Dr Simmons said.

She noted that the organisation does not charge for services provided in relation to the court.

“We do also have a lot of persons who come up from the street saying they need services. So that becomes quite taxing. Then we do a lot of protection orders, and a protection order can run quite lengthy.”

Dr Simmons said qualified persons are generally unwilling to volunteer at FSN.

“If we were to hire a second counsellor, that means you would have to generate money consistently – not just once in a while, but consistently where that money is always available to pay Social Security and NHI and all that stuff – plus money to pay the salary for that counsellor,” she explained.

Dr Simmons also made a renewed appeal for assistance with another financial dilemma. “We need a new office space. I use this as a plea [that] we are in dire need of space because we are bursting out the seam here [at the current office],” said the FSN boss.

“FSN cannot pay any $2,500 per month rent. We manage with $800 a month here [at the current location], and we can’t go past that. It’s just too costly for us to put all our resources into rent and upkeep and don’t have anything to operate the organisation.”

“We do need at least a space for two offices, a general area for the reception, an area for our pantry, and an area for our thrift store,” added Dr Simmons.