Bermuda's most populous parish will be the testing ground for a pilot project aimed at helping parents improve their child-rearing skills.

Human Affairs Minister Jerome Dill last week announced the creation of the "It Takes a Parish to Raise a Child'' project, based on the old adage of "It Takes a Village to Raise a Child''.

"Recently, Bermuda has experienced an increase in unacceptable behaviour and in some instances violence by young people,'' Mr. Dill pointed out. "While it is easy to blame `bad parenting' as the cause of these problems, the reality is that many people do not know what `good parenting' is.

"The old days of the extended family and relatives living in close proximity to each other are gone, so that it is now no longer always possible to learn or observe good parenting skills from one's parents and relatives.'' Mr. Dill said the project was designed to fill this void.

The project, to be launched later this month in Pembroke, hopes to start a parish dialogue to discover effective parenting skills and share that information with residents, he said.

And it aims to increase access to existing community resources to help parents. When a service is needed, the project plans to help parents obtain aid.

"This project does not seek to replace the importance and responsibilities of the role of the family in raising a child,'' Mr. Dill added. "Rather it seeks to enhance this role by empowering families to obtain information, advice and support services that are available in the community. .. such as churches, schools, social agencies, Government departments and business enterprises.''