Government has granted permission to the Barbados Children’s Trust to build a home for 11 to 18-year-olds.Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley made the announcement on Wednesday at the unveiling of plaques at the Nightengale Children’s Home in Black Rock, St Michael. She disclosed that the new home will be built at Bullen, St James on the property known as the Bullen Agricultural Station.“We will have housing, but then a special acreage will be dedicated to persons between the ages of 11 and 18,” Mottley said.Director of the Barbados Children’s Trust, Yvonne Brewer, said the groundbreaking ceremony for the new facility specifically designed to take adolescents into adulthood, has been scheduled for next month. She said construction is expected to be completed in April 2024.“When they leave that facility they will be ready for the workplace. They will become valuable members in the society of Barbados, ready to get out there and create the future,” she said.Brewer explained that in 2010 the Barbados Children’s Trust partnered with the Child Care Board to create the village at Nightengale where children from birth to age 11 in residential care would be in a safe and nurturing environment which would enable them to grow and become all that they could be.
