Beyond marriage preparation

It is always good to celebrate the family, but May 15, the International Day of Families, offers us a unique opportunity to reflect and to celebrate the beauty of the family which embraces every single individual, the couple and society at large. This year’s United Nations family theme, “Ensuring Work-Family Balance”, helps us to see how vital it is for the family to provide both economically and emotionally for its members.

Both components are essential for the success and the smooth running of the family.

For this reason, we all have to strive to create a good balance where, in order to provide economically, people can be happy at work and have enough time to invest in their relationship and to care for their families.

There are a number of options that can help us find this balance; like telework or working during school hours. I think we all need the courage to say that, in order to really support the family, work during the weekends or at night, if not eliminated, should be reduced to the very minimum for working mothers to have more quality time as a couple and with children.

There is no doubt that flexible working opportunities result in better and healthier outcomes for parents and children.

The lack of insistence to reach these aims is creating various tensions and difficulties for family members. As a matter of fact, a large proportion of the work and efforts carried out by Cana’s counselling services involve dealing with these difficulties.

Cana’s counselling services go back a long way. Following the inception of the first “marriage preparation courses” in 1952, Monsignor Charles G. Vella embarked on the setting up of counselling services within the movement. It was in the later 1950s that the first cohort of counsellors received their training in marriage counselling in the United Kingdom, a practice which continues to the present day in Malta.

Year after year, couples, families and individuals seek help through counselling, which is offered by a majority of lay voluntary counsellors. Last year alone, Cana had 642 client referrals amounting to 3,382 hours of counselling. The counsellors at Cana, a group of dedicated individuals who have received training in counselling and practised for a number of years, offer their valuable time to help others in their difficulties.

The demand continues to grow with the ever-increasing opportunities and challenges on families and couples today.

One of the greatest challenges is certainly the ability of the family/couple to balance work and family demands, and the stress these inevitably bring with them. For instance, part of this challenge involves helping couples to understand and support each other in their new roles, moving away from stereotyped, rigid beliefs and expectations towards creating more flexibility.

Moreover, apart from offering counselling to clients regarding work and family challenges, other problems that counsellors meet include infidelity, relationship conflicts, separations, communication difficulties, sexuality related issues, bereavement and loss, issues related to spirituality and mental health problems.

Counselling services offered by the Cana Movement are free of charge. However, donations from those making use of the services are accepted.

Through these donations, counsellors receive the necessary ongoing training and supervision. Furthermore, counsellors are exposed to diverse ways of working with today’s new challenges to assist their clients in the best professional ways.

Supporting the team of counsellors at Cana are a number of psycho­therapists and psycho­logists who provide a service to counsellors as well as clients. A minority of religious persons also offer their time and expertise.

Counselling services at Cana have also been available to students following courses in counselling or counselling psychology at the University of Malta.

The service provides an in­valuable context for continued learning and specialisation, particularly in the areas of couples and family. This service has also recently been a source of referral for the government’s Employee Support Programme.

Fr Mizzi is the director of Cana Movement.