The Rock Family Care Centre

The ROCK Family Care Centre was birthed with a vision to transform family life through the Rock, Jesus Christ. It aims to implement programmes and activities through counselling, training and education for the holistic development of individuals and families. To date, counselling has been provided for trauma, grief and loss, domestic violence, sexual violence, marital issues, poverty, school issues and for a wide range of other spiritual, mental and psychological issues.

The Rock Family Care Centre was officially launched on May 17th, 2015. While a Non-Profit, the Centre is another of the innovative ministries of Church on The Rock (COTR), submitted to the covering of Rev. and Sis. Agard and the leadership of the church.

The founding Board, with great enthusiasm, and guided by Sis. Ruthann Ramoutar, a master practitioner in the area of non-profits, set out to craft its vision, mission and strategic plan. The dream was that The Rock Family Care Centre would be recognized in the community and beyond as the premier place where men, women and families go for help with the problems of daily living and with the pain and suffering brought about by life’s difficult crises. It would function at the highest level of efficiency, be staffed by well trained and qualified administrators and counsellors, and have all the resources necessary for bringing spiritual, mental and emotional healing to the wounded and hurting. It would be a safe place where kind, loving and gracious people listen without condemning, while providing wise counsel and guidance.

The Rock Family Care Centre enjoys a synergistic relationship with CNC, providing supervision to its students while the students counsel more difficult cases. Some former internship students continue to volunteer at the Centre after they graduate. Having the two streams of professional and church Counsellors working together is very beneficial to the Centre.

When the Centre was established, it was intended that its counsellors would be members of COTR. Twenty persons attended a basic course in Christian Counselling facilitated by the Trinidad and Tobago Association of Christian Counsellors. However, persons seeking services required counselling that went beyond basics, and the Centre partnered with Caribbean Nazarene College (CNC) to be a Practicum/Internship site for its Master’s students in Counselling Psychology. To date, the Centre has accommodated about ten students. A Psychology and Counselling student from West Indies School of Theology (WIST) was welcomed recently..

Through the years, the Centre has networked with Government agencies, including Citizens Security Programme. The Centre ran an education support and adolescent and reproductive health education programme from April-July, 2016 for students from primary schools in the area who were not performing well academically. The Centre keeps in touch with students and their parents.