The Ministry of Education has frowned on an initiative by local lobby group Global Charity for All and the St Catherine Justices of the Peace Association to offer free psychological testing for primary and high school students in several parishes through an American psychologist and community psychotherapist.

“The ministry does not approve or endorse this event. The matter has been referred to the relevant quality assurance bodies,” the ministry’s Communication Director Ruth Ann Carr said bluntly in answer to queries on Tuesday.

“Additionally, the ministry has received no request nor have we approved the use of the Portmore Youth Innovation Centre despite its inclusion in a flyer circulating on social media,” Carr said.

The response comes amidst a firestorm of objections from local experts which resulted in a cease and desist order being served on the overseas-based counselling professional, Dr Lisa Hall, by regulatory body the Council for Professions Supplementary to Medicine (CPSM), last week.

The CPSM, prodded by concerns raised by the Jamaican Psychological Society (JamPsych), which is the professional body for psychologists and counsellors in Jamaica, wrote to Hall indicating that she was being barred from conducting any testing here, given “gaps” in documentation she submitted to verify her qualifications and licensing.

According to JamPsych’s licensure chair Dr Margaret Barnette, the entity had been unaware of the testing plans for students up to last Monday when it was brought to their attention by local psychologists who had seen the flyer advertising the services to be administered, between February 5 and 25, to students in the St Catherine area at the Youth Innovative Centre in Edgewater, Portmore. The initiative was also to extend to schools in Kingston, Manchester, and St Elizabeth based on requests made from other schools.

The services on offer included clinical interviews; mental status examinations; vocabulary sub-tests; computation sub-tests; and the Bender visual-motor gestalt test, second edition, which gives a description of visual-perceptual and motor functions, general and behaviour observations, among others.

“I asked for her file and went through it and I wasn’t satisfied with what was there, then all of us went through all of the documentation CPSM gave us. Then I called her. She told me she was doing it for a long time [on the island’s south coast]. I said to her, I am seeing some gaps and I need you to fill those gaps. The only thing on her résumé was a testing and measurement course and that is for 45 hours, no practicum, no practice,” Dr Barnette said.

“If you are going to practise it means that in your studies you would have to do some practicum. In none of her degrees has she done any practicum at all and she didn’t send me anything. If your country licensed you, there is no reason we wouldn’t license you, all we ask is that you do 500 hours connected to a psychologist here. All we ask is that you produce that licence,” she said, adding that Hall had not produced that licence when asked.

Hall’s résumé, a copy of which was obtained by the Observer, says she earned a Master of Science in Psychology from Capella University in 2014 and a Doctorate of Philosophy in Research Psychology from Walden University in 2022.

“We are not only looking on the degree, we looked at the transcript. We are not trying to fight her down, [but] what we know is that what is on file and what she presented as late as Friday would not have given the qualifications or the competencies to do what she says she is going to do. We are talking here about the psycho-educational assessment; we are concerned. Even if she is using a computerised programme you have to know what you are doing. She is licensed as a professional counsellor. She would have to work alongside a licensed professional here. Jamaica is not a place where we just come and do anything we want. I think that’s what I have a grave challenge with,” JamPsych’s licensure chair stated.

On Tuesday, Dr Hall, who had on Monday indicated that the tests were computerised and that she still intended to conduct the examinations, told the Observer that there were no gaps in her professional competencies.

“I’m here on the island, everything you want to see, everything you need I will sit down with you and show you all of my credentials and all of my experience to practise. If you want evidence I will sit down and give you everything you want to know, but please don’t say things about me that are not true,” she said.

She further said that when she was given the cease and desist letter she was not given an opportunity to produce proof of her competencies.

“So when I sit down with you and show you everything that I have then I need an apology, not an apology to me but an apology to the children; you are holding them up,” she said, adding that she would be holding off on her plans until clearance is received from the authorities here.

“On my licence, on my transcript, you will see my course work, test and measurements and analysis. Those are courses that allow you to diagnose and allow you to do testing. I have a master’s in psychology and a PhD in psychology and practicum experience,” Hall declared.

Last week, president of Global Charity for All, Justice of the Peace Cleon Porter told the Observer that the demand for the sessions had been overwhelming.

“Based on the responses we are getting it’s not only going to be in St Catherine because other schools, like the YMCA Kingston, want us to come there and do their entire school population, and other schools in St Elizabeth and Manchester want us to come,” Porter told the Observer.

“There is a need in Jamaica for students to get tested psychologically so that they can move on to different schools. The waiting list is very long in Jamaica, and some parents have to wait for all a year to get these kinds of testing, and when they even get through, it’s very expensive. So this now is a breath of fresh air, a kind of relief for these persons,” noted Porter at the time.