P.A.R.E.N.T.S/ Parents Anonymous need your help. The charity has had the most unusual run of bad luck over the past few months from just about every electrical device in their office dying, including their fax machine and computer, to being left without lights after a faulty air conditioner caused an electrical short.

Parents Awareness Resources for Educating, Nurturing and Training Skills (P.A.R.E.N.T.S)/ Parents Anonymous started as a registered charity about 14 years ago in an effort to provide parents with a safe place to share with one another the trials and tribulations of raising children.

They share a building at 38 Mount Hill with similar organisations including the Coalition for the Protection of Children, Parenting for Men and Parents forever/pre-divorce counselling.

There are currently 12 volunteers who are all trained facilitators and include a nurse and one school psychologist, who are currently working with about five families on the Island.

Assistant Chairperson, Patricia Fields, said the group met weekly on Wednesday nights for about two hours from September to June. ?We?re only supposed to meet for an hour every Wednesday night, but they enjoy our sessions so much that it ends up running over to about two hours,? she said.

She said they always encourage past parents who felt they?d benefited from the group sessions to continue attending in an effort to support new parents who attend for the first time.

?They sometimes just need to hear from other parents who have had similar problems that things will get better,? she said. Some of the problems they deal with include marital problems, problems associated with raising children and housing problems.

She said in some cases the courts in Bermuda might decide to take a child away from parents who have no housing and place them with other family members and Parents Anonymous become the only link families have to the courts and their children.

One of the problems they have is that families referred to them by court sometimes don?t show up for group sessions, but they do report back to the courts regularly on all matters.

?It?s all very confidential and we need parents to know that what they say in our meetings, stays in our meetings!?

She added that they also taught parents court etiquette and held separate sessions with children during their weekly meetings. Besides the weekly meetings with parents at their Woodlands site, Parents Anonymous also offers counselling to teenage mothers at Teen Haven.

?We all work from nine to five and we also have families, so sometimes the telephones at our office might not be answered, but we do have an answering machine,so anyone who wants to attend our meetings, or would like to offer their services as a volunteer can just leave a message,? she said.

She added that they really wanted someone to man their telephones during the day, but couldn?t afford to pay anyone, or find a volunteer who was willing to do this, adding:?As it is, we are running on a shoe string budget.?

She added that volunteers were currently paying for refreshments for clients and games for the children and said any kind of donation, including possibly some new office equipment would be most appreciated.

The charity recently held a fund-raising drive over Christmas, but did not receive a good response due to the tsunami relief effort. Ms Fields said they would be considering another donation appeal in April this year which is normally their Blue Ribbon Campaign.

Parents Anonymous in Bermuda is affiliated to the organisation, Parents Anonymous Inc. in the US, based in California and for more information visit www.parentsanonymous.org or call 292-6147 or 292-6148.