Assistant Director of Social Services in charge of Community Support, Cherely Kelly appeared on The Rundown talk show with host Clint Watson on Tuesday.  Kelly expressed concern about the rise is persons seeking help from the Department of Social Services.

During the show Kelly highlighted the amount of men seeking assistance.  She said, “sometimes a lot of men are going through various challenges in their personal lives and sometimes men can’t properly handle the stresses and the strains that life would put on them.   And so this is where we see persons coming in asking for shelter.  Some of the men may have made decisions in their lives where they’ve had challenges with maybe drugs or  alcohol and made some choice, maybe they might have relationship problems with their families etc.  And so then they’re caught at an age where they cannot seem to handle the stresses of life and so they turn to us.”

The Department of Social Services also provides food assistance.  Single applicants receive $92 per month while a person with a family of up to five people can receive $208.00.  Kelly said, “when you talk about persons who are working,  a lot of the persons who are working make minimum wage, like was mentioned earlier, and also you have persons who may have a government job or a job in a private firm but their salary is completely maxed out.  Bahamians live a really good life, if you say it like that.  They like to have a car.  They like to have things, that’s us.  So you have persons who would have gone to the bank to purchase furniture, to buy a car,  to add other things to their house just for decoration or to take a vacation or to buy school supplies or whatever.”