ABSTRACT
My involvement in social work followed ten years of teaching in primary schools in Barbados and Trinidad in the West Indies. It was always of interest to me to discover the background of the children who presented with behavioural challenges in the classroom and invariably it was found that they were reacting to problems within the family. There may have been the birth of a new sibling or the separation from a member of the family through death or migration, or the child may have been shifted from his or her family home to another. What was rewarding was that after a number of visits to the home and getting to know the family and they to know me, the child’s behaviour improved and so did the educational attainment.
