A home away from home for children

Consequently, child and family psychotherapist Dr Monica Starke is in the process of establishing a new private childcare centre called Counselling, Training and Consulting Ltd which will be offering early childhood education for children, child and family counselling, parent education seminars and help to improve the quality of customer service for caregivers and teachers.

“It’s really tough to cater for working parents,” she stressed, “but today I empathise with the parents because if you mess up, there are ten people waiting to get your job, so having been a working parent all my life, I really am sensitive to the needs of the working parent. So this is going to be a service that caters for the working parent and the family.” The Counsel-ling, Training and Consulting Ltd will be located on the Cascade Main Road, Cascade.

Starke is an adjutant professor at the Nova South Eastern University, in the Department of Organisational Leadership. (Nova South Eastern University is located in Miami, Florida, USA.)

She said she’s hoping to have a practice here because she also sees a lot of scope for it.

“So I work with teachers, supervisors and superintendents abroad by helping them improve their departments so I would love to do the same thing here and it means so much more to me because this is my country and this land is what made me who I am,” she said.

She said the soon to be established centre will be staffed by ten to 12 professional early childhood educators and caregivers with a catering capacity for 80 to 100 children.

“Whether we will take in as many children, we will see but we have the capacity to take in as many as 80 children because we have the space,” explained Starke.

“We want to raise the quality of childcare at the centre and also for it to become a learning and teaching centre to help raise the quality of care and education of our children.”

Starke said the centre will provide a safe haven for children while their parents are at work.

“Another benefit is that because these children are young, I think early intervention is the key to so many problems and because of my background as a child and family psychotherapist for over 12 years, I would sit every week with different teachers and I’ll coach them on case or child reviews.

“So, that if a child is not developing in the way that he or she should, we’d try to talk to the parent and get help for that child.

“With early intervention, it could be as simple as the child not seeing or hearing well.

“After all, the child spends so much time with us, that we are sometimes in more of a position to identify what’s happening mentally and emotionally to a child. So, we want to work hand-in-hand with the parents,” Starke said.

Starke disclosed that caregivers from throughout the country, including those working in the children’s homes, could receive early childhood education training at the centre.

In terms of financing, she said she’s hoping that the corporate sector can assist the centre thus reducing the cost of providing quality childcare.

“We would love to join hands with the corporate sector so that our fees can remain at a point where it is affordable and also, so that the parents can get scholarships for their children,” stated Starke.

“In order to reduce the juvenile delinquency I believe that we have to work with the teachers, caregivers and adults because if we enhance the skills of the adults and increase the quality of care and education, then the children will benefit.

“We have to improve the quality of the environment, the quality of the interaction between the caregivers and the children, we all have to continue improving our parenting skills. So, I think that by continuous education and training, we will undoubtedly reach the children and teenaged population,” Starke suggested.