Topic: Dorine Whittaker

Teresa Echenique has been appointed as the new chief officer for the Ministry of Community Affairs.

A $180,000 study completed in March as part of an ongoing review of Cayman’s troubled social services network looked at the structure of those services rather than how specific services to the poor and indigent might be improved, according to testimony in the Legislative Assembly’s PAC.

The cost of welfare and the number of people seeking financial help from government have risen sharply. About $50 million per year is spent on public programs providing direct assistance to people in need, out of central government’s annual revenue of $600 million.

Government may have been paying out millions of dollars over the past decade in veterans’ stipends without verifying that the recipients ever served in the armed forces anywhere in the world.

Staff at the Department of Children and Family Services have been learning sign language to help them communicate with deaf children.