The government has renewed a funding agreement with the Cana Movement that will see €104,000 spent on counselling services for families facing challenging situations.
Family Minister Michael Falzon and Cana Movement director Mgr Charles Attard signed the agreement following a press conference at the Catholic Institute in Floriana on Wednesday morning.
Better known for its marriage formation courses, the movement has since expanded from advising prospective newlyweds to providing more acute counseling and therapeutic services that deal with a number of challenges that families may face.
The movement provides counselling and psychotherapy for individuals and couples, psychological assessments, a family therapy clinic, parental coaching clinic, infertility counselling and support clinic. It recently set up a family reconciliation clinic, which is focused on helping couples considering separation.
It has 13 warranted professionals including family therapists, counsellors, a psychologist, a psychotherapist and a family mediator.
“For as long as we have known, human beings are born into families and families will always have their unique struggles and challenges,” Family Minister Michael Falzon said.
“Our prerogative as government is, when we see that somebody is doing good and bringing benefits to families, then that activity should be sustained to keep passing those benefits on.”
“We believe that counselling services are essential, in these times perhaps more than ever and we are committed to providing these services without distinction of religion, race or orientation,” Mgr Attard told Times of Malta.
“This agreement will not only go a long way in helping us sustain the services but our system of referrals will now expand so that clients from government agencies may also be referred to us for services.”
Mgr Attard said that throughout the pandemic, the nature of counselling had shifted online, however the number of people unable to afford a donation to cover services has also been growing.
“We have a policy, whoever comes through the door, we’re going to help them, whether they can afford to or not, but increasingly we’ve seen more people coming who are in that situation,” Attard said.”
“In the past three months we actually didn’t have funding and had to make do and find the funds ourselves to keep them going. This agreement will hopefully serve to alleviate some of these challenges.”