Outbreaks of domestic violence and increased social problems will take a more serious grip on Bermuda unless the community begins to tackle the issue of family life and invest in the youth, campaign groups have claimed.

Family Learning Centre director Martha Dismont reacted to news that a woman was arrested last week after a man was stabbed during an apparent domestic dispute at a Devonshire residence.

She said: "There will be more and more of those sorts of things happening unless we begin to take a close look at what is going on in homes these days.

"We are all seeing an increase in behaviours that are not healthy and I strongly believe that it is due to issues that families do not know how to get help for."

She added that the rising occurrence of acts of vandalism and violence seemed to be indicative of a "don't care" attitude among some people.

"There are certain things that you look for in terms of how well things seem to be going. If there is more graffiti around for instance, or if there are signs of young people hanging around more. It is not something that Bermuda can afford, but I believe we can stem the tide of what is happening."

And Sharon Apopa, director of counselling services at the Women's Resource Centre, which deals with a variety of family and individual issues, was unable to say whether incidents of domestic violence had increased this year, but agreed that everyone had to do more to crack the problem.

However, she also said that the incidents of domestic violence reported were "just the tip of the iceberg". She said: "The number of incidents of inter-personal violence is going up. And I can tell you from the top of my head that the number of incidents of female on female violence is increasing.

"I believe there is still a lot of education that needs to be done and there are still areas where services could be better co-ordinated.

"There needs to be more studies done on the impact domestic violence has on children. A lot of children we see with emotional and behavioural problems both at home and in school have suffered domestic violence or seen it."

And Mrs. Apopa said Bermuda, as a whole, needed to take a comprehensive look at the impact domestic violence had on society.

She added: "It's a much wider issue. We have pockets of the population that are interested in it, but it's a community issue. There needs to be more preventative measures, and there is definitely not enough funds to address it.

"Domestic violence is a learned behaviour. Children in that situation begin to put conflict with violence. I think when that happens, it has a big impact on many aspects of society. It does not just stay within the home."

And Ms Dismont also said family disputes had a major knock-on effect on how children learned at school.

"If it doesn't improve, then we will be generating a lot of problems," she said. "Even in the 1970s, it was clear that education was having challenges because the family system was breaking down."

Ms Dismont said a lot of problems in family environments found their roots in economic difficulties and were also related significantly to how children learned about money. "If someone has strong moral values about money and learns how to work towards it responsibly then that makes a huge difference."

She also said she would like to see more businesses take the initiative in creating job skills programmes that would give young people easier entry into the employment market.

"We need to also develop a mental environment that says we are going to invest in our youth," she added.

"If a family has trouble making ends meet you get situations where the parents aren't in homes because they're out working all hours and the children end up being cared for by other family members. These are compounded issues that lead to disputes."

And Ms Dismont said another way of tackling the problem would be for Government to take a smarter approach to the housing issue, ensuring that it was primarily those people who showed they were ready to put in some sacrifice that were given low-cost accommodation.

"I believe that Government and the community can provide opportunities for families to flourish and then people will take advantage of them. I am a strong proponent of having a national plan for families, similar to what they have in Canada. Then you can hold people accountable to certain benchmarks that you set.

"We want youth that have goals and healthy role models. And we want a social service system that is always evaluating and responding to them. I don't think that these things are pie in the sky. A plan would just give us a starting point and then we could adapt it to what we are aspiring to."