More than 50,000 students and 4,000 teachers in north-western Jamaica who are deemed to have suffered trauma as a result of Hurricane Melissa have been reached for psychosocial support during 2,086 sessions, Education Minister Senator Dr Dana Morris Dixon reported on Friday.

Additionally, Morris Dixon said that 167 regional staff members and more than 9,000 parents received support.

She was responding to a question from Opposition Senator Maziki Thame about the quality of education post-Melissa.

Speaking more directly to the quality of education being offered in the aftermath of the devastating hurricane that damaged hundreds of schools across several parishes on October 28, 2025, Morris Dixon stated, “It’s not perfect, it’s not going to be perfect, especially after trauma”.

She said it was for this reason that a lot of emphasis has been placed on trauma and “allowing the authorities to begin to treat with the trauma experienced by our teachers and by our students”.

The education minister said the Ministry of Education operates a comprehensive programme of psychosocial support, and “some of it is virtual and some of it is face-to-face”. She shared that the ministry’s guidance counselling team has been supported by 36 private clinicians across the island.

“We have a programme in the ministry where we pay private psychologists and psychiatrists and so they’ve been helping us to deliver the psychosocial support,” Morris Dixon said.

She also mentioned that a small delegation from Israel was in the island doing psychosocial work in the schools.

The ministry’s efforts are bolstered by the support of guidance counsellors within the schools and guidance counsellors from the church. They are assisted by international partners like Early Starters.

Meanwhile, Morris Dixon said her ministry has also made it a priority to offer support to parents “because sometimes when you’re hit with trauma, the children are going through the trauma, you’re going through the trauma, it can be overwhelming.

“And so, we’ve included parents, and to date, we’ve had over 9,700 parents that have taken advantage of this support”, she explained.

Morris Dixon said her ministry staff has received “quite a bit of help” from University Hospital of the West Indies which “sent out their teams that are experts in psychiatrics”. Also on-board are UNICEF, Children First and the Ministry of Health and Wellness with its team of counsellors who have been deployed across the affected region.

Minister Morris Dixon also noted that the quality of education depends on the availability of water and electricity in the affected areas. She pointed out that for some rural schools, water depends on electricity.

“So we’re not able to get water back if electricity isn’t restored, and that’s why the [US$150-million] loan to the JPS [Jamaica Public Service Company] was so important because we would not have been able to get electricity restored,” she said, pointing specifically to Westmoreland, one of the hardest-hit parishes.