Minister of Social Services and Community Development, Melanie Griffin spoke yesterday morning to begin this year’s Rehabilitation Week under the theme ‘Changing Lives through Rehabilitation’.

The Department of Rehabilitative/Welfare Services held this press conference yesterday morning to announce the plans for rehabilitation month and to inform the public of the roles the department plays in rendering services to the community and in the development of juveniles that have encountered problems with the law.

Minister Griffin said that with the hundreds of Bahamians of all ages that are remanded and sentenced for crimes, it is the intent of the court, government and wider society that the individuals are restored to a state of useful life through various educational spiritual social and vocational programs.

“Rehabilitation deals with transformation and newness. Rehabilitation addresses the old ways of thinking, the old partners and cycles of dysfunction in a person’s life and assists in showing promise to a new way of living. Changing lives through rehabilitation begins and ends with each on of us’’ said the minister.

Minister Griffin said that there are some basic fundamentals that we must take into consideration when we think about ‘changing lives through rehabilitation’. She said the person must want to change, they must seek the assistance of professional services, seek to have a positive mindset and attitude, discover their true value of life and self-worth and finally, they must have a strong spiritual grounding by putting God first. She said these things are necessary in the proper restoration of patients.

“It is no sense putting someone into an institution or facility and they either come back just like they went in or they come back worst. We must change their course and we can only do it if we all work together, the Department of Rehabilitative/Welfare Services, the community and the families’’ said Griffin.

The minister said that it is her role to create bold and innovative ways to address the social issues in our country today. She is prepared to work tirelessly to see our country’s way through these issues and she urged faith based organizations and other social partners to continue to collaborate with the ministry in the fight against crime and social decadence in our country.