VWSU provides psychosocial support to San Juan North staff

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit (VW­SU) has pro­vid­ed psy­choso­cial sup­port to staff at San Juan North Sec­ondary School fol­low­ing the as­sault and rob­bery of a teacher on the school com­pound.

The in­ter­ven­tion took place on Mon­day, with 30 mem­bers of staff par­tic­i­pat­ing in a de­brief­ing ses­sion aimed at al­low­ing them to dis­cuss their con­cerns, process the im­pact of the in­ci­dent and ac­cess pro­fes­sion­al psy­choso­cial sup­port.

The ses­sion was con­duct­ed by two VW­SU sub-teams and in­clud­ed mem­bers of the school’s se­nior staff.

As­sis­tant Head of So­cial Sup­port Kirk Pierre, Su­per­vi­sor of Op­er­a­tions Janelle Se­bastien-Reyes and Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Of­fi­cers Bian­ca Au­gus­tus, Jamiy­la Sargeant, An­cil Win­ches­ter, Kime­co Fletch­er-Chase and La­toya Lewis fa­cil­i­tat­ed the in­ter­ven­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS, the prin­ci­pal and staff ex­pressed ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the sup­port and in­di­cat­ed an in­ter­est in a fol­low-up ses­sion.

The po­lice said the VW­SU would con­tin­ue mak­ing its sup­port ser­vices avail­able to mem­bers of the school com­mu­ni­ty.

The lat­est in­ter­ven­tion forms part of a wider re­sponse in­volv­ing the TTPS, Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er stake­hold­ers fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent.

The agen­cies have al­so been ad­dress­ing se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns at the school.

Last week, TTPS and part­ner agen­cies met with school of­fi­cials to dis­cuss mea­sures aimed at strength­en­ing se­cu­ri­ty at the com­pound.

Those mea­sures in­clude im­prov­ing light­ing, re­pair­ing sec­tions of the perime­ter fenc­ing, in­stalling closed-cir­cuit tele­vi­sion cam­eras and clear­ing thick un­der­growth around the school to im­prove vis­i­bil­i­ty.

The TTPS said the in­ter­ven­tions are in­tend­ed to ad­dress both the wel­fare of those af­fect­ed by the in­ci­dent and se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns at the school.

The as­sault and rob­bery of the teacher prompt­ed re­newed at­ten­tion to se­cu­ri­ty at the school com­pound, with au­thor­i­ties now pur­su­ing both phys­i­cal se­cu­ri­ty im­prove­ments and sup­port for staff af­fect­ed by the in­ci­dent.