Af­ter hav­ing their roof blown off this Wednes­day by a tor­na­do, the af­fect­ed Chase Vil­lage fam­i­ly was paid a vis­it on Sat­ur­day by Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Don­na Cox and mem­bers of the min­istry’s man­age­ment team.

She was ac­com­pa­nied by Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, Vi­jay Gan­gaper­sad, the Di­rec­tors of the Min­istry’s Na­tion­al So­cial De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme and Na­tion­al Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Di­vi­sion. She start­ed with Khadene Be­har­ry-Crowe's fam­i­ly at Ra­goo­nanan Road West, Chase Vil­lage, as their house sus­tained the worst dam­age.

Be­har­ry-Crowe along with oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers ex­pressed grat­i­tude to the min­istry for the sup­port.

She said the Cou­va-Tabaquite-Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion came on the day of the in­ci­dent, Coun­cil­lor for Per­se­ver­ance/Wa­ter­loo Dubraj Per­sad al­so came and said he was work­ing on send­ing a truck to clean up on Tues­day.

The fam­i­ly was al­so of­fered coun­selling which will be fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the Na­tion­al Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry.

Cox said "Be­sides the ham­pers, there are food items for the chil­dren, two food cards val­ued at $500, so they can buy gro­ceries. What is im­por­tant is that we have our sup­port teams in­volved in the is­su­ing of house­hold grants. From what we see here to­day, we will be able to as­sist them with a grant for the roof, a grant per­tain­ing to house­hold fur­nish­ings and al­so to as­sist with the rewiring of the home as the whole roof is gone."

She said un­der the min­istry's Mi­nor House Re­pairs grant the fam­i­ly can ac­cess $20,000 for a dis­as­ter, Elec­tri­cal House Wiring grant $25,000 max­i­mum, and the San­i­tary Plumb­ing grant up to $15,000.

Cox said if the fam­i­ly had to re­lo­cate tem­porar­i­ly to af­fect re­pairs to their home, the min­istry will try to give them rent as­sis­tance for at least three months.